[vbox-dev] [PATCH] UDPTunnel : new network interface backend to allow using this to link to GNS3 and QEMU instances over the network

[Nikolay Igotti]

       Hello,

  Idea of patch is nice, but what I don't understand is how do you 
implement reliable ethernet
(as carrier collision and packet retransmit in real hardware is 
performed by the NIC) transport over
potentially unreliable UDP (no guarantees on delivery or frames 
ordering). Cursory look shown no
code for retransmit or attempts to handle ordering issue in patch.

At least some explanations how do you expect that to work, and tests how 
this whole feature behaves
in heavily contended networks would be nice.

    Nikolay.

On 5/11/11 3:11 AM, Alexey Eromenko wrote:
> A letter to community:
>
> UDP Tunnel networking
> ---------------------
>
> UDP tunnel is a great mechanism to interconnect virtual machines
> running on different hosts. It is intended for advanced users.
>
> Technically this is done by encapsulating guest's ethernet frames into
> host's UDP/IP packets, and sending them to the destination. This
> tunnel is a sort of VPN, except that UDP tunnel is not encrypted.
>
> ----------------------------
>
> This feature will enable GNS3 network simulator to work perfectly
> together with VirtualBox.
> GNS3 allows to build clouds and distributed network topologies in very
> nice graphical way, where you can actually *draw* network topology,
> and interconnect VMs together, even if they run on different physical
> hosts. GNS3 is very user friendly.
>
> So you all are encouraged to test UDP tunnels, and report your findings.
>
> Best wishes,