Distributed Overlay Virtual Ethernet (DOVE) is a
tunneling and
virtualization technology for
computer networks, created and backed by
IBM. DOVE allows creation of network virtualization layers for deploying, controlling, and managing multiple independent and isolated network applications over a shared physical network infrastructure.[2]
Overview
The tunneling format is decoupled from the logical network view offered by DOVE, and defines only the way
frames are
encapsulated to be transferred by the underlying network infrastructure. As a notable difference from other network virtualization solutions (such as
OTV), this allows DOVE not to be limited to providing
OSIlayer 2 emulation only (for example, passing
Ethernet frames).[2]
Logical components of the DOVE architecture are DOVE controllers and DOVE switches (abbreviated as dSwitch). DOVE controllers perform management functions, and one part of the
control plane functions across DOVE
switches. DOVE switches perform the encapsulation of layer 2 frames into
UDP packets using the
Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) frame format, and provide virtual interfaces for
virtual machines to plug into, similarly to how physical
Ethernet switches provide ports for
network interface controller (NIC) connections. DOVE switches are running as part of virtual machine
hypervisors.[2][3][4]
Advantages
Primary advantages of DOVE include the following:[5]
No dependency on the underlying physical network and protocols
No addresses of virtual machines are present in
Ethernet switches, resulting in smaller
MAC tables and less complex
STP layouts
No limitations related to the
Virtual LAN (VLAN) technology, resulting in more than 16 million possible separate networks, compared to the VLAN's limit of 4,000
As of November 2013[update], DOVE components are implemented as part of
VMware's hypervisors, while implementations for the
LinuxKVM and
Open vSwitch are planned.[6][7]
DOVE extensions for
VXLAN were merged into the
Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 3.8, which was released on February 18, 2013.[8][9] Appropriate extensions to related
userspace configuration utilities were added into version 3.8.0 of the
iproute2 utilities, which was released on February 21, 2013.[10]
^Thomas Richter (October 21, 2013).
"Software Defined Networking using VXLAN"(PDF). LinuxCon Edinburgh.
IBM Research and Development, Linux Technology Center. Retrieved November 22, 2013.