On 21 May 2013 05:01, Zhidong Yu <zdyu2000 at gmail.com> wrote: > It seems there are two different meaning for this term. One is about a > sort of usage scenario where the virtual network is *directly *mapped to > a physical and instance is *directly *connected to the outside world > without floating IP or L3 agent [1]. The word 'provider' in this context > could be understood as external *provider *of network service. > In the openstack quantum terminology this is usually referred as an 'external' network; it is also sometimes referred as 'public' but the first term is probably more apt. An 'external' network can also be a 'provider' network. this would mean that the cloud admin has specified peculiar physical mappings for the network which will be used by tenant as an external gateway and/or for floating IPs. > > The other one is about a way to allow administrator to associate virtual > networks with its underlying physical networks' name/type/segmentation_id, > so that segregating between different types of network traffic can be > achieved. This is done by Provider Extension [2]. > This is exactly what is usually referred as 'provider network'. Might the confusion arise from the fact that the 'External' network is typically a provider-owned network? > > Do I take it correct? If yes, then I am really confused by the section 5.1 > of Quantum Admin Guide [3][4] where the Provider Extension is discussed but > somehow the first meaning of Provider Network is referred. For instance, > the highlighted words in the quotation below is very confusing. > > Provider networks allow cloud administrators to create OpenStack >> Networking networks that map directly to physical networks in the data >> center. This is commonly used to give tenants direct access to a >> "public" network that can be used to reach the Internet. It may also be >> used to integrate with VLANs in the network that already have a defined >> meaning (e.g., allow a VM from the "marketing" department to be placed on >> the same VLAN as bare-metal marketing hosts in the same data center). >> > I agree this section might need to be clarified with some examples. > > > [1] > http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-network/admin/content/use_cases_single_flat.html > [2] > http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-network/admin/content/provider_attributes.html > [3] > http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-network/admin/content/provider_networks.html > [4] > http://docs.openstack.org/trunk/openstack-network/admin/content/provider_terminology.html > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack > Post to : openstack at lists.launchpad.net > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack/attachments/20130521/8a53e6f3/attachment.html>