Fwd: Open vSwitch possible use, thoughts

[Lonnie Cumberland]

Hi Norman,

Based upon my current understanding of Genode, which is still minimal but
growing steadily, as you move to get VirtualBox running well, it seems that
for the networking to be viable in the VB instance, you might want to
support network-bridging as well as NAT (masquerading IP's) in a similar
way that VB currently allows and also how XEN seems to work in that each VM
instance can be bridged to the host with a "real" IP of it's own on he same
subnet as the host, or to possible use the VB built in NAT support VM
instances on another subnet but all channeled through the host network
adapter. Typically, it seems that VB sets up a TAP/TUN device (virtual
network card) on the host and then allows for the various network setups
like NAT, bridged, host-only, etc...

As I was not sure if these questions had been investigated, I thought that
perhaps Open vSwitch ( ie. a software hub basically) might be easily
implemented in Genode and serve as the networking center for VirtualBox in
a similar way that XEN seems to do it (
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Networking).

This allows VB under Genode to support many VMM's concurrently.

You have probably already thought of these things, but I thought that I
would mention them as the question arose in my mind as well.

Just some thoughts that I had since my goal is to try and set up
NOVA-Genode-VirtualBox in a complete Type-1 Hypervisor that could be
competitive to XEN while being much more secure, stable, and address the
shortcomings found in that hypervisor which is very code bloated and heavy.
 The NOVA-Genode-VirtualBox approach should require much lest LOC and in
general be better given the wonderful design that you and your team have
developed from the inception.

Kind Regards and have a great day,
Lonnie

On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:16 AM, Norman Feske
<norman.feske at ...1...>wrote:

> Hi Lonnie,
>
> > I found Open vSwitch (http://openvswitch.org/) and wanted to see what
> > your thought were on this as it might be a good solution to allow for
> > multiple VirtualBox VM's to be running under NOVA & Genode.
> >
> > Any thoughts on this?
>
> I remember your email. Admittedly, when I studied the web site, I did
> not immediately grasp the problem that Open vSwitch would solve for
> Genode. Could you elaborate a bit more about your thoughts?
>
> For simple multiplexing of a physical NIC to multiple network-using
> processes, we usually use the NIC bridge (os/src/server/nic_bridge)
> component. How do you envision the role of Open vSwitch in a Genode
> system? Would that be an alternative to NIC bridge? If yes, what would
> be the benefits of using one over the other?
>
> Best regards
> Norman
>
> --
> Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske
> Genode Labs
>
> http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org
>
> Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
> Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Genode-main mailing list
> Genode-main at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/genode-main
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.genode.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20140404/e39d158d/attachment.html>