--- title: "How Nutanix AHV Uses eBPF for vNIC-IP Mapping" url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-nutanix-ahv-uses-ebpf-for-vnic-ip-mapping-yoxv4oss3 source_url: https://www.nutanix.com/tech-center/blog/how-nutanix-ahv-uses-ebpf-for-vnic-ip-mapping type: article source: "eBPF" published: 2026-02-23T16:15:41.118Z updated: 2026-02-23T16:16:03.702Z tags: ["linux"] reading_time: 5 upvotes: 0 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How Nutanix AHV Uses eBPF for vNIC-IP Mapping **[eBPF](https://daily.dev/sources/ebpf)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Nutanix AHV uses eBPF ring buffers to achieve accurate, real-time vNIC-to-IP mapping on its hypervisor. Rather than parsing packets in the kernel (which strains verifier limits and consumes kernel memory), AHV's eBPF programs act purely as filters—forwarding only relevant ARP, DHCP, NDP, and DHCPv6 packets to a userspace process (AVM) via BPF_MAP_TYPE_RINGBUF. The userspace component handles all parsing, validation, and storage in a binary file. This split architecture delivers lower kernel complexity, easier iteration, unified IPv4/IPv6 support, and live-migration safety by persisting learned IPs in VM XML during migration. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How NetworkManager uses eBPF to support CLAT and IPv6-mostly](https://daily.dev/posts/how-networkmanager-uses-ebpf-to-support-clat-and-ipv6-mostly-fiiow2hx2) · Red Hat Developer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [What Is eBPF? Use Cases, Benefits, and Key Differences](https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-ebpf-use-cases-benefits-and-key-differences-5dgqadloo) · Isovalent · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [How eBPF Empowers Developers to Observe Inside the Linux Kernel in a Safe and Unintrusive Way](https://daily.dev/posts/how-ebpf-empowers-developers-to-observe-inside-the-linux-kernel-in-a-safe-and-unintrusive-way-jhmpnwjer) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-nutanix-ahv-uses-ebpf-for-vnic-ip-mapping-yoxv4oss3)