Connecting interface of xrv9k instance with the external world

[ACodingfreak]

Hi All,

I am new to vrnetlab and I really had fun deploying the initial setup with xrv9k instances.

Is it possible to connect the interfaces on XRV9K instance with the external world via physical interfaces in the server ?

[plajjan]

Yes, vr-xcon has a tap mode which can bridge from its "native form", which is the qemu style TCP sockets, to a tap device. Use such a vr-xcon instance on the host machine. Bridge the tap interface to a bridge which also connects to the physical interface. Use your normal vr-xcon instance to connect to this vr-xcon instance and connect it to whatever virtual router you want. It probably means that both vr-xcon needs to run in the host network namespace.

[ACodingfreak]

Thanks for the reply @plajjan

Can you share a sample command for the same ?

[plajjan]

vr-bgp runs xcon in tap mode, see https://github.com/vrnetlab/vrnetlab/blob/master/vr-bgp/vr-bgp.py#L173

So ./xcon.py --tap-listen 1 will listen on port 10001, which is what vrnetlab considers the logical port 1. It will bind to the first tap interface, so tap0. Then create a bridge using brctl and add tap0 and your physical interface into the bridge.

Since xcon is running on localhost, now you need your other vr-xcon instance, the "normal one" and connect your virtual router to localhost, like so vr-xcon.py --p2p my-router/1--localhost/1