Summary
Given our commitment to stability and the high sensitivity of VPP to the nuances of different NICs and drivers, we must ensure that VPP can only be activated on hardware and platforms that have been validated for its use.
Validated NICs for VPP
Below is a list of NICs where VPP activation is supported:
| Filter Type | Filter Value | NIC Name/Description | Platform Where NIC Can Be Found |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCI ID | 15b3:1019 | Mellanox Technologies MT28800 Family [ConnectX-5 Ex] | Bare-metal |
| PCI ID | 15b3:101d | Mellanox Technologies MT2892 Family [ConnectX-6 Dx] | Bare-metal |
| PCI ID | 15b3:101e | Mellanox Technologies ConnectX Family mlx5Gen Virtual Function | Oracle Cloud |
| PCI ID | 8086:1592 | Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller E810-C for QSFP | Bare-metal |
| PCI ID | 1ae0:0042 | Google, Inc. Compute Engine Virtual Ethernet [gVNIC] | Google Cloud |
| PCI ID | 1af4:1000 | Red Hat, Inc. Virtio network device | KVM-based hypervisors, including with Open vSwitch; Google Cloud |
| PCI ID | 1d0f:ec20 | Amazon.com, Inc. Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) | AWS |
| Original Kernel Driver | hv_netvsc | Microsoft Hyper-V network interface card | Microsoft Azure |
VPP activation on any NICs not listed above is not supported and should be restricted.
Adding new NICs to the supported list
A key condition for adding new NICs to the list is that VyOS maintainers must have physical and permanent access to the NIC in question. VPP can be highly sensitive - there is often a significant difference between a NIC being visually recognized (with basic traffic passing through) and achieving stable, reliable performance. Proper validation is essential. Also, permanent access is mandatory for re-validation with new versions.