Networking

Both the Kitten and GeekOS substrates on which Palacios can run currently include drivers for two simple network cards, the NE2000, and the RTL8139. Palacios also supports passthrough I/O for PCI devices, meaning we can make NICs directly accessible by guests. The Kitten substrate is acquiring an ever increasing set of drivers for specialized network systems. A lightweight networking stack is included so that TCP/IP networking is possible from within the host OS kernel and in Palacios.

When debugging Palacios on QEMU, it is very convenient to add an RTL8139 card to your QEMU configuration, and then drive it from within Palacios. QEMU can be configured to provide local connectivity to the QEMU emulated machine, including bridging the emulated machine with a physical network. Local connectivity can be done with redirection, or with a TAP interface. For global connectivity, a TAP interface must be used; it is bridged to a physical interface.