Comment 8 for bug 776650

NAT is of limited usefulness if I want to use network sevices provided by my VM guests. (ssh tunneling can be used but it makes for limited uselfulness).

Bridging is invasive because it takes over the primary host networking interface (there may be ways around this, but they are not straight forward).

With vde2 the VMs and host share a seperate network (I use iptables for forwarding). Using vde2 the primary physical host network interface is left alone. With vde2 one can use VM guest services from the host and vice versa without any special forwarding (via ssh or something similar). I use iptables and dnsmasq on the host to provide gateway, DHCP, and DNS for the VMs.

With vde2 I can use the VMs on a laptop and still have full access to them, and the VMs can indirectly use (via iptables) whatever internet route is being used by the host.