> On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 09:16:47PM -0600, <David Creswick wrote:
> > handle the packet forwarding and it would just think it's on two
networks.
> > (the second one being one on a single machine with a host system and the
> > guest system)
> Hm. So this would be a point to point network? PPP sounds good to me.
>
>
> Not as fast as possible with an emulated NE2k or somthing, but needs to
> special treatment on either end. Hell, it's workable /right now/.
>
>
> -=- James Mastros
Hmm indeed. Is the idea to have an Ethernet driver interface in the host
module, then on receipt of a packet, check that it's targetted to the
"virtual" device in the guest (by checking the target address in the
packet), or maybe not even checking, assuming that the host/guest OS will do
any necessary checking, then pass the packet on to the guest. Similarly the
guest "virtual" device would send ethernet packets to the host module
directly. This would be very efficient, much more so than emulating an
actual card. Consider: packets could be transferred through buffers with
flags indicating when they contain data for forwarding. No need to signal
through emulated IO, the host driver could just check the incomming buffer
when it has control (or a single emulated IO access could flag the host).
Outgoing data would require an emulated hardware interrupt, but only one.
Sweet. And no need for a "virtual LAN".
P.s., James, protocols would be handled by the host/guest OSes, this would
be a device-level connection. Actually, not much work. Much simpler than
emulating a card, unless I've missed something(s?).
