[vbox-dev] VirtualBox network patches for FreeBSD (vboxnetflt + vboxnetadp)

[Fredrik Lindberg]

Danny Braniss wrote:
> 
> great work!
> any chance it will support PXE?
> what about throughput, at the moment iperf timet it at 120Mbits/sec
> but the host is connected at 1G.
> 
> danny
> 

It supports PXE. However the OSE version of VirtualBox does only have
PXE booting on the PCnet interfaces not the Intel ones.
Also, if you're going to boot a FreeBSD kernel you'll need to patch
the etherboot code in virtualbox, otherwise it will abort with
"Unable to load file".
I don't know whether it's FreeBSDs pxeboot or etherboot that is the
offender here.

See, for more info
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-emulation/2007-April/003503.html


Throughput is not something I have actively looked at, there might be
something that can be optimized regarding mbuf to SG-convertion.
One source is most likely due to its dependency on the netgraph
system which causes an additional packet detour.
It uses netgraph because it's the only reliable way to hook
into the input/output path of ethernet interfaces, and
that also works properly on FreeBSD 7 and higher.

Fredrik