Patent ID: 7356818

Claim:
A method for communicating from a first virtual machine to an external device, said method comprising the steps of: a base portion of a virtual machine operating system forming said first virtual machine and other virtual machines by respective allocations from a CPU, storage and other real resources of a real computer, said base portion controlling all of said virtual machines and providing communication pathways for communications from said first virtual machine to said other virtual machines and to a tangible network adapter card coupled to an external network leading toward said external device; said first virtual machine writing an IP datagram to an output buffer within storage allocated to said first virtual machine, said IP datagram comprising data and a destination IP address associated with said external device; and said base portion copying said IP datagram from said output buffer into storage allocated to said base portion such that said IP datagram passes from said first virtual machine into said storage of said base portion without passing through any other virtual machine, said base portion identifying said destination IP address from said IP datagram and determining from a list of IP addresses for said other virtual machines in said real computer that said destination IP address does not correspond to any of said other virtual machines in said real computer and in response, said base portion forwarding said IP datagram, addressed to said destination IP address, to said tangible network adapter card; and said tangible network adapter card sending said IP datagram to said destination IP address via said external network.