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XENNET(4)                 Device Drivers Manual (xen)                XENNET(4)

NAME
     xennet - Xen frontend paravirtualized network interface

SYNOPSIS
     xennet* at xenbus?

DESCRIPTION
     The xennet interface forms the frontend part of the paravirtualized
     drivers used by Xen guest domains to have network connectivity.

     When the host domain is NetBSD, the endpoint of the xennet interface is a
     xvif(4) interface.  In the XenStore, xvif and xennet are identified by
     "vif" (virtual interface) entries.

     Conceptually, frontends and backends drivers are similar to two Ethernet
     cards connected via a crossover cable.

     xennet interfaces can pass VLAN tagged packets.

     The minimum number of RX buffers can be controlled with the
     hw.xennet.xnfrx_lowat using the sysctl(8) utility.  The default is to
     reserve no minumum number of cached RX buffers.  A minimum number of
     reserved RX buffers can also be compiled into the kernel config using the
     XENNET_XNFRX_LOWAT option.

DIAGNOSTICS
     xennet%d: can't read mac address, err %d  The MAC address for this
     interface could not be read from XenStore.

     xennet%d: %s is not a valid mac address  The MAC address specified in the
     configuration file of the newly created guest domain is invalid.

     xennet%d: using event channel %d  The Xen event channel (virtual
     interrupt) ID associated to this xennet.

     xennet%d: using RX copy mode  The xennet and its associated endpoint use
     copy mode for communication: packets are copied from one domain's memory
     to another.

SEE ALSO
     bridge(4), ifmedia(4), options(4), xenbus(4), xvif(4), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY
     The xennet driver first appeared in NetBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS
     The xennet driver was written by Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@NetBSD.org> and
     Christian Limpach <chris@pin.lu>.

NetBSD 11.99                    August 27, 2025                   NetBSD 11.99