Connecting the devices

Connecting the devices in our network lab will be done by using veth peer interfaces as was explained in Chapter 9. If we need to connect two different labs from two different hosts, we can use VXLAN, but for our exercise in this section, we are only making connections on the same host. Therefore, veth peer interfaces will do the job.

One protocol that I have included in the pre-built virtual machine image and will be very important to us is Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP). LLDP is one IETF standard that came after the successful Cisco proprietary protocol called Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP). It is used to obtain information about the other side of a layer 2 connection by sending specific Ethernet frames. We are going to use it to validate the connections between devices in our network lab.

Before we proceed with our connections, let’s check how Docker created our out-of-band (OOB) management network.

The OOB management network

Docker...