THE Technical Conference on Linux Networking

Netdev 0.1

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2015-01-24: accepted proposal - Mahesh Bandewar - ipvlan

The commonly used method to connect namespaces to the outside world without going through the forwarding setup on the host used to be the macvlan. This setup is simple and efficient except when the next-hop devices apply policies barring host to act like a forwarding device. This is especially problematic where the connected next-hop e.g. switch is expecting frames from a specific mac from a specific port. In a situation like this the macvlan setup does not work. The host will either have to fall back non-efficient forwarding methods or something else. ipvlan was designed to address this specific need along with few other mentioned in next few sections. This paper attempts to describe these use cases and highlights differences with macvlan devices and briefly talk about future enhancements planned.