steeve/boot2docker — pull request #71 by aheissenberger (2014-01-11 12:44:16+00:00)
Title: Virtual box / better performance networkadapter VIRTIO

The "Paravirtualized network adapter (virtio-net)" is special. If you select this, then VirtualBox does not virtualize common networking hardware (that is supported by common guest operating systems out of the box). Instead, VirtualBox then expects a special software interface for virtualized environments to be provided by the guest, thus avoiding the complexity of emulating networking hardware and improving network performance.

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html#nichardware

the driver exists in tiny core linux