Would there be interest in virtualization of the ixgbe driver?

[Nikos Vassiliadis]

On 1/5/2011 12:50 AM, Ryan Stone wrote:
> The way that I envision this working is that you'd run something like
> "ifconfig vix0 create parent ix1" to create a new virtual interface
> sharing the same physical interface as ix1.  From that point on, vix0
> would be a completely different interface from ix1, with its own MAC,
> vlan table, IPs, etc.
>
> Any comments as to whether this would be useful(or useless) would be welcome.

Speaking for myself, I would say, yes, it sounds very interesting.

Currently the same result can be achieved, by assigning a pseudo-ethernet
interface to a vnet and bridging it to a physical ethernet interface.
It would be nice to offload some things to the hardware.

Yet, I don't know if the number of changes in the infrastructure worth the
labor, for just one specific hardware. Is ixgbe the only hardware that
support such things?
Or maybe it is some trend of the future?

As a virtualization user, I find it most useful.

Nikos