On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 02:25:26PM +0100, Pino de Candia wrote:
> Please excuse me for posting this naive question, but I searched
> online and looked at the source code and haven't figured this out.
> 
> What is the difference between a port created with type=internal and
> type=tap?
> 
> It seems to me that if I create a port with type=tap, then OVS creates
> the tap (makes the ioctl calls to /dev/net/tun) and opens the
> user-side (raw block-device side) of the tap. But this seems to be
> exactly what OVS does for internal ports - I read in INSTALL.userspace
> that a tap is created for every internal port. However, I am using the
> OVS kernel module so I don't know if that document applies.

It doesn't.  Only the userspace version uses tap devices to implement
internal ports.

> Since internal and tap ports are so similar, what are the use-cases
> for tap-ports for which internal ports are inappropriate?

I don't know of any good uses for tap ports.  We are thinking about
removing them.

> And just to spell my assumptions out a bit further - it seems to me
> that in the common use-case of attaching a VM to an OVS bridge, a tap
> is created externally to OVS (e.g. by scripts or cloud management
> software) and the tap is added as a system port to OVS so that OVS
> handles the kernel side of the tap, and the VM gets the user-side of
> the tap. So VMs are not a use-case for OVS ports of type=tap. Is that
> correct?

Right.
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