On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Chris Webb <chris.webb@elastichosts.com> wrote:

Sam Johnston <samj@samj.net> writes:

> For anything more complex though you do need to keep track of your [virtual]
> networks separately, even if only because the client needs to be able to
> enumerate them in order to give the users something to strap their VMs to
> and (on the system management side) to link to a physical segment.

You need to track virtual networks as first class objects (what Richard and
I tend to call VLANs), not network interfaces which attach to them.

Agreed, but Richard was just saying "I don't think that a separate object is needed here at all". I can see where that point of view comes from for public clouds and maybe we can cater for both views by just assuming network interfaces mean "Internet" unless otherwise specified.

I've been steering clear of the term VLAN because it means something to network engineers (in the 802.1q tagging sense) - "virtual network" works for me. We discussed having tags like "internet" and "vlan-4095" which meant something in terms of termination... that translates nicely to categories and I'm starting to think a category for VLAN 1..4095 is justified (thus giving network engineers a well defined demarcation point).

Sam