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| Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) | ||
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A Shared Ethernet Adapter is a layer-2 network bridge to securely transport network traffic between virtual Ethernet networks and physical network adapters. The SEA also enables several client partitions to share one physical adapter. The SEA is hosted in the Virtual I/O Server.
To bridge network traffic between the internal virtual network and external networks, configure the Virtual I/O Server with at least one physical Ethernet adapter. Multiple virtual Ethernet adapters can share one SEA. Each virtual Ethernet adapter can support multiple VLANs.
The SEA has the following characteristics:
Virtual Ethernet MAC addresses of virtual Ethernet adapters are visible to outside systems (using the arp -a command).
Supports unicast, broadcast, and multicast. Protocols such as Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Boot Protocol (BOOTP), and Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) can work across an SEA.