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To use the Quantum API effectively, developers should understand the concepts introduced in this chapter.
Each tenant can define one or more networks. A network is a virtual isolated layer-2 broadcast domain reserved to the tenant. A tenant can create several ports for a network, and plug virtual interfaces into these ports.
A port represents a virtual switch port on a logical network switch where all the interfaces attached to a given network are connected.
A port has an administrative state which is either 'DOWN' or 'ACTIVE'. Ports which are administratively down will not be able to receive/send traffic.
An attachment represents an interface plugged into a logical port. At any time at most one attachment can be plugged into a given port.
An attachment typically identified a virtual network interface. Network interfaces are typically defined in an external services which uses Quantum, for instance the OpenStack Compute service, Nova.
