Virtual computing networks for hardware virtualization

Cubahiro A., Kamande M.

This article concerns questions related to networking among virtual machines that utilize hardware virtualization. The case of QEMU + KVM usage in OS Linux is analyzed in details. Methods for providing such virtual machines with networking are discussed. Two virtual interfaces for this case for OS Linux are discussed: «TUN/TAP» interface and «macvtap» interface. Different aspects of these two virtual interfaces are also discussed. Such interfaces could be used not only by hypervisor, but also by programs that provides some special networking services (e.g. VPN). But in this article these interfaces are discussed in depth only for the case of hypervisor. Thereafter test nodes characteristics are given with the description of the test cases that were used to test performance of these interfaces.

Keywords:Networking, virtual machines, virtual networks, Linux, QEMU, KVM