incus/doc/reference/network_physical.md

(network-physical)=

Physical network

The physical network type connects to an existing physical network, which can be a network interface or a bridge, and serves as an uplink network for OVN.

This network type allows to specify presets to use when connecting OVN networks to a parent interface or to allow an instance to use a physical interface as a NIC. In this case, the instance NICs can simply set the networkoption to the network they connect to without knowing any of the underlying configuration details.

(network-physical-options)=

Configuration options

The following configuration key namespaces are currently supported for the physical network type:

• bgp (BGP peer configuration)
• dns (DNS server and resolution configuration)
• ipv4 (L3 IPv4 configuration)
• ipv6 (L3 IPv6 configuration)
• ovn (OVN configuration)
• user (free-form key/value for user metadata)

{{note_ip_addresses_CIDR}}

The following configuration options are available for the physical network type:

BGP options

These options configure BGP peering for OVN downstream networks:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-bgp start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-bgp end -->

DNS options

These keys control the DNS servers and search domains used by the physical network:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-dns start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-dns end -->

IPV4 options

These options define the IPv4 configuration for the physical network:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-ipv4 start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-ipv4 end -->

IPV6 options

These options define the IPv6 configuration for the physical network:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-ipv6 start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-ipv6 end -->

OVN options

These options apply when using a physical network as an OVN uplink:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-ovn start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-ovn end -->

Common options

These apply to all physical networks regardless of other features:

% Include content from config_options.txt

    :start-after: <!-- config group network_physical-common start -->
    :end-before: <!-- config group network_physical-common end -->

(network-physical-features)=

Supported features

The following features are supported for the physical network type:

• {ref}network-bgp