VDE is an ethernet compliant virtual network that can be spawned over a set of physical computer over the Internet. VDE is part of virtualsquare project.

Virtual Distributed Ethernet

The Virtual Square networking support have to be an ethernet compliant virtual network able to interconnect virtual machines even if they are running on different hosting computers. This is the reason why the virtual networking support in Virtual Square needs to be distributed.

VDE is one of the tools developed within the Virtual Square project to provide an effective communication platform for virtual machines interoperability.

The main features of VDE are:

  • consistent behavior with real ethernet network.
  • It enables interconnection between virtual machines, applications and virtual connectivity tools.
  • Last but not least, it does not requires administrative privileges to run.

VDE main components

In practice the structure of a VDE network consists of the same architectural tools and devices of a real modern ethernet network. Here is a brief description of VDE components:

  • VDE switch
Like a physical ethernet switch, a VDE switch has several virtual ports where virtual machines, applications, virtual interfaces, connectivity tools and – why not? – other VDE switch can be virtually plugged in.
  • VDE plug
It is the program used to plug into a VDE switch. Data streams coming from the virtual network to the plug are redirected to standard output and data streams going to the VDE plug as standard input are sent into the VDE network.
  • VDE wire
Any tool able to transfer a stream connection can become a VDE wire (e.g. cat, netcat, ssh and others).
  • VDE cable
VDE components are interconnected via VDE cables that are made of one VDE wire and two VDE plugs as happen in a physical ethernet network.
  • VDE cryptcab
Informally VDE encrypted cable. Although it is possible to use tools like ssh or cryptcat to obtain an encrypted wire to interconnect VDE plugs, these tools work with connection-oriented streams to provide encryption, resulting in nested connection-oriented streams with poor performance and unjustified overhead. The idea behind cryptcab is the adoption of connectionless protocols to provide encrypted cables facility.

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