Virtual Networking
Morning All,
Have been thinking a bit more about virtual networks recently – studying on Virtual DMZ infrastructures etc. One thing that i have thought about, which hopefully someone with a few more figures than me, can answer.
In normal P2P transfer/ad-hoc network transfer; the data transfer rate (MBps) is constrained by the medium; the NIC, the stack and the drivers, normally limiting to either 100Mbps or 1000Mbps (full/half). These are physical issues which need to be addressed at a layer 1 level / layer 2 level.
My question to you, the world, is – why arent virtual networking p2p transfers faster? If you want to transfer files beetween 1 VM and another VM; the transfer should be upwards of 1/2GBps – as you are transferring files in beetween the same file system (granted via a few security measures). There is no interaction with the physical NIC’s or mediums at all. In theory, all it will be doing (please correct me if wrong), is transferring a file out of the virtual machine hard drive, from the hard drive through the VM Container, out onto the VMBus/Hypervisor bus, back into the other container, and then into the other VM’s hard drive. The only constraint here, is the TCP/IP stack, which im sure can be slightly modified / a new protocol made for VM Transfer, allowing 2/3/4 GBps and upwards transfer.