and one or more phys 144 148 using communication coupling 162 and communication may be communicated between the one or more phys 144 148 and the gb 1 gb 2 ports 146 150 using the communication coupling 164 internal to linux it is possible to create a network device which virtualizes a standard underlying network device this technique may be used to add a vlan driver logically on top of a typical ethernet driver thus a linux mechanism may be used to create non vlan clone devices that operate in parallel to the vlan device in an embodiment the cmc 39 s linux implementation the mac mac link from the ihs 100 to the switch 142 is first created as eth2 at this point a vlan device e g a vlan 4003 device is created on top of the eth2 device linux allows vlan packets on the vlan 4003 device non vlan packets on the eth2 to both ingress and egress the l2 switch 142 however modifications of non vlan configuration may require eth2 to be modified e g ifconfig 39 d down this may disable the vlan device as well for example the following non vlan configuration operations will affect the vlan.