4.4 Performance

Our goal for VNET was to make it easy to convey the network management problem induced by VMs to the home network of the user where it can be dealt with using familiar techniques. However, it is important that VNET's overhead not be prohibitively high, certainly not in the wide area. From the strongest to the weakest goal, VNET's performance should be

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in line with what the physical network is capable of,

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comparable to other networking solutions that don't address the network management problem, and

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sufficient for the applications and scenarios where it is used.

We have found that our implementation meets the later two goals, and, in many cases, meets the first, strongest goal as well.