What are IP Instances?
IP Instances are separate views of the IP stack, so that visibility and control is limited to the entity (zone) that the instance is assigned to. By default, all of Solaris has one view of IP, and therefor central visibility and control. With zones, the ability to view and control is limited by privileges, and all zones’ network traffic decisions are made with a global view by the kernel. When IP instances are used, the view is limited to that information that applies to the instance, not the full kernel. So routing decisions, for example, are made based on the information only in this instance, and does not use any of the additional information that other instances on the same kernel may have. Similarly, control is delegated to this instance, so that a non-global zone can set network parameters such as routes, ndd(1m) values, IP address(es). Snooping of the interface(s) in the IP Instance is also possible. There is no visibility into any of the other IP Instances that may be sharing t
