Re: [Qemu-devel] tun/tap networking

["Jim C. Brown" <jma5@umd.edu>]

On Sat, Oct 01, 2005 at 02:50:59PM +0100, Paul Brook wrote:
> On Saturday 01 October 2005 14:07, Jim C. Brown wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 01, 2005 at 01:30:06PM +0200, Oliver Gerlich wrote:
> > > That means it would work if the host NIC is connected to a switch? Then
> > > the switch would send packets from the guest which are meant for the
> > > host back to the host NIC and everything's fine! Or did I misunderstand
> > > that now?
> >
> > If the switch sends packets from the host NIC back to itself, I believe
> > that would work.
> 
> A switch will not send a packet back where it came from. That would be a sure 
> way to introduce infinite forwarding loops.
> 
> Paul
> 

Depends on how intellegent the switch is. (Forwarding back only those packets
which are addressed to the host itself wouldn't necessarily cause an infinite
loop. Tho the switch would probably be smarter if it dropped such packets
outright.)

Of course there are more favorable solutions (2 nics on the same hub, kernel
bridging, even VMware's method), so getting such a switch to work is probably
not worth the time.

-- 
Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty.
Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.