Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 00/16] net: hub-based networking

[Luiz Capitulino]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 15:37:15 +0200
Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:

> Il 25/05/2012 15:30, Luiz Capitulino ha scritto:
> > On Fri, 25 May 2012 15:19:28 +0200
> > Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> >> Il 25/05/2012 15:18, Luiz Capitulino ha scritto:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Still not sure what you mean...
> >>> I meant it's a similar case. kqemu was a special case and maintenance 
> >>> burden.
> >>> We've dropped it and didn't regret. What's stopping us from doing the same
> >>> thing with vlans?
> >>
> >> That we have an alternative, and that -net dump is actually useful.
> > 
> > I haven't reviewed the series yet, but -net dump can work without this,
> > can't it?
> 
> -net dump requires putting a back-end, a front-end and the dump client
> in the same VLAN.  So it is quite useless without this.

VDE allows this too :)

> > It's always possible to have alternatives in qemu, the point is how far
> > we're going on bloating it.
> > 
> >>>>>  we removed kqemu and didn't give an
> >>>>> alternative.  This time we are providing an alternative.
> >>> Alternatives already exist, we don't have to provide them.
> >>
> >> Alternatives that require you to have root privileges (anything
> >> involving libvirt or iptables) are not really alternatives.
> > 
> > It seems to me that vde doesn't require root, but even if it does, moving
> > this outside of qemu would also be feasible.
> 
> Yeah, VDE probably includes something like an hub.  But then we could
> drop even "-net socket", "-net udp", "-net dump", and only leave in
> vde+tap+slirp.  Or even move slirp into VDE. :)  That's a very different
> thing.

Let's start with what is hurting us.

> Do distributions package VDE at all?

I'm not sure. But note that openvswitch is a better alternative for linux.