About the Oracle Solaris Network Protocol Stack

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The following figure shows the layers of the Oracle Solaris network protocol stack. This information can help you determine which networking strategies to adopt at your site. By being familiar with the layers, you can also better detect networking connectivity problems, track and diagnose sources of performance issues, and troubleshoot configuration issues.

Note the figure shows only those layers of the stack that pertain to the various networking features described in this document.

Figure 1 Physical and Virtual Network Administration Within the Network Protocol Stack

image:Figure of Oracle Solaris network protocol stack showing which layer of the stack various networking features are administered.

The following table further describes which layer of the stack each feature is administered. Some features are administered at more than one layer of the stack.

Table 1 Networking Features by Network Protocol Stack Layer

Network Protocol Stack Layer	Feature or Technology
Transport (L4)	Firewalls Flows Pluggable congestion control Socket filtering
Protocol or network (L3)	DHCP Flows IP interfaces and IP addresses IP tunnels IP network multipathing (IPMP) Integrated Load Balancer (ILB) Routing Virtual network interfaces (VNIs) Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) Virtual eXtensible area network (VXLANs)
Datalink (L2)	Aggregations (Datalink Multipathing (DLMP) and trunking) Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) Flows Link Layer Physical datalinks Network virtualization features: Data Center Bridging (DCB) Etherstubs Elastic Virtual Switch (EVS) Virtual switches Virtual local area networks (VLANs) Virtual network interface cards (VNICs) Virtual eXtensible area network (VXLANs)