Paper: What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.5 Networking

VMware vSpere 5.5 was released in September 2013 and introduced a couple of improvements to the networking capabilities of the vSphere platform.

These enhancements could be resumed as follows:

  • More hashing algorithms for link aggregation
  • More link aggregation groups
  • Traffic-filtering support
  • Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) marking support
  • Improved host-level packet-capture tool
  • Improved single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support
  • 40GB network adapter support



Today VMware published a paper titled: “What’s New in VMware vSphere 5.5 Networking” that resumes and briefly explains all this new features.

The paper contains the following sections:

  • VMware vSphere Distributed Switch Enhancements
    • Link Aggregation Control Protocol
    • Traffic Filtering
    • Quality of Service Tagging
  • Troubleshooting and Performance Enhancements
    • Enhanced Host-Level Packet-Capture Tool
    • 40GB Network Adapter Support
    • Single-Root I/O Virtualization Enhancements