Chapter 18. Virtual Networking


This chapter introduces the concepts needed to create, start, stop, remove, and modify virtual networks with libvirt.
Additional information can be found in the libvirt reference chapter

18.1. Virtual Network Switches

Libvirt virtual networking uses the concept of a virtual network switch. A virtual network switch is a software construct that operates on a host physical machine server, to which virtual machines (guests) connect. The network traffic for a guest is directed through this switch:
Virtual network switch with two guests

Figure 18.1. Virtual network switch with two guests

Linux host physical machine servers represent a virtual network switch as a network interface. When the libvirtd daemon (libvirtd) is first installed and started, the default network interface representing the virtual network switch is virbr0.
This virbr0 interface can be viewed with the ip command like any other interface:
 $ ip addr show virbr0
 3: virbr0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
     link/ether 1b:c4:94:cf:fd:17 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
     inet 192.168.122.1/24 brd 192.168.122.255 scope global virbr0
Red Hat logoGithubRedditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

© 2024 Red Hat, Inc.