Broadcast is a feature of the cloudSwXtch overlay network. With Broadcast, existing applications and services that expect standards-based broadcast will work without requiring any code changes and with performance that approaches that of bare metal.
At a high level, cloudSwXtch implements a software switch that serves the same role as a hardware switch. cloudSwXtch receives broadcast packets from producers and sends a copy of each packet to every destination VM.
The xNIC 2 service handles tunneling broadcast traffic between the cloudSwXtch and the VM operating system. The xNIC 2 service must be installed on every VM that needs to send or receive broadcast traffic.
The cloudSwXtch system consists of a software switch instantiated within a virtual network and a set of virtual machines that have an xNIC 2 virtual interface.
Applications can send and receive broadcast by targeting the virtual network interface. Broadcast packets are generated by the local operating system and the xNIC 2 virtual interface seamlessly picks these up and sends them to the cloudSwXtch instance. Local applications will work unchanged in this environment just as they would on a similar bare-metal network.