Patent ID: 8838743

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: at least one processor and a non-transitory storage medium to provide a virtual switch, the virtual switch comprising at least one router and a data structure; wherein the at least one router utilizes the data structure to organize a connection between one or more virtual network interface cards (VNICs) to form a virtual network; wherein the one or more VNICs are each located in one or more virtual machines (VMs); wherein the one or more VNICs each has a unique identifier distinguishable from a media access control (MAC) address, the unique identifier not visible to any processes running in the corresponding VM; and wherein the virtual switch routes a data frame received from a source VNIC of the one or more VNICs using the unique identifier of the source VNIC to identify the source VNIC as the source of the data frame instead of a MAC address of the source VNIC.