NAME

       veth - Virtual Ethernet Device

DESCRIPTION

       The  veth  devices  are virtual Ethernet devices.  They can act as tunnels between network
       namespaces to create a bridge to a physical network device in another namespace,  but  can
       also be used as standalone network devices.

       veth  devices are always created in interconnected pairs.  A pair can be created using the
       command:

           # ip link add <p1-name> type veth peer name <p2-name>

       In the above, p1-name and p2-name are the names assigned to the two connected end points.

       Packets transmitted on one device in the  pair  are  immediately  received  on  the  other
       device.  When either device is down, the link state of the pair is down.

       veth  device  pairs are useful for combining the network facilities of the kernel together
       in interesting ways.  A particularly interesting use case is to place one end  of  a  veth
       pair  in  one  network  namespace  and  the  other  end in another network namespace, thus
       allowing communication between network namespaces.  To do this, one can provide the  netns
       parameter when creating the interfaces:

           # ip link add <p1-name> netns <p1-ns> type veth peer <p2-name> netns <p2-ns>

       or, for an existing veth pair, move one side to the other namespace:

           # ip link set <p2-name> netns <p2-ns>

       ethtool(8)  can  be  used  to  find  the  peer of a veth network interface, using commands
       something like:

           # ip link add ve_A type veth peer name ve_B   # Create veth pair
           # ethtool -S ve_A         # Discover interface index of peer
           NIC statistics:
                peer_ifindex: 16
           # ip link | grep '^16:'   # Look up interface
           16: ve_B@ve_A: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,M-DOWN> mtu 1500 qdisc ...

SEE ALSO

       clone(2), network_namespaces(7), ip(8), ip-link(8), ip-netns(8)