Patent ID: 11893406
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A method performed in a virtual computer system, the virtual computer system comprising virtualization software that supports a first virtual machine (VM), the virtualization software providing the first VM with a first virtual network interface, wherein the first VM includes a first network interface card (NIC) driver loaded into the first VM, the method comprising:
receiving, at the a virtual local area network (VLAN) coordinator, an outgoing network data frame from the first NIC driver;
modifying the outgoing network data frame, at the VLAN coordinator, by writing a first VLAN identifier associated with the first VM into the outgoing network data frame received from the first NIC driver, wherein the first VM is within a first VLAN, wherein the first VLAN identifier restricts transmission of the outgoing network data frame from the first NIC driver to the first VLAN associated with the first VLAN identifier, wherein the modifying occurs outside of the first VM, and wherein modifying the outgoing network data frame is transparent to the first VM;
transmitting the modified outgoing network data frame over a physical network, the transmitting being performed by one or more physical network interfaces connected to the computer system and the physical network;
receiving, at the VLAN coordinator, an incoming network data frame from the the physical network;
determining the incoming network data frame includes the first VLAN identifier,
removing, at the VLAN coordinator, the first VLAN identifier from the received incoming network data frame; and
conveying the received incoming network data frame to the first VM through the first NIC driver.