Choosing a plugin and driver
Neutron networking plugins, drivers, and agents are responsible for implementing features that provide network connectivity to and from instances. The ML2 plugin can leverage multiple layer 2 technologies simultaneously through the use of mechanism drivers. The two drivers discussed in this book, LinuxBridge and Open vSwitch, implement network connectivity in different ways.
Using the LinuxBridge driver
When configured to utilize the ML2 plugin and LinuxBridge driver, Neutron relies on the bridge, 8021q, and vxlan kernel modules to properly connect instances and other network resources to the virtual switch and forward the traffic. The LinuxBridge driver is popular for its dependability and ease of troubleshooting but lacks support for some advanced Neutron features, such as distributed virtual routers.
In a LinuxBridge-based network implementation, there are five types of interfaces managed by Neutron, which are:
- Tap interfaces
- Physical interfaces
- VLAN interfaces...
