The txqueuelen is a value in the kernel on network interfaces that sets the transmit queue length. This value can be tuned for different work loads. In the case of modern networking the defaults can sometimes be changed to get better line speeds over ethernet. Most people will do this using a rc.local command to set it on the physical ethX devices like this. vim /etc/rc.local Add the following /sbin/ip link set eth0 txqueuelen 2500 This is a perfectly reasonable way of doing it but what happens when network interfaces appear after boot and the name is unknown before hand? This is exactly what happens with Libvirt vnetX interfaces. Ideally we would be able to get Libvirt to tune these interfaces when it creates them, but that level of control is yet to be implemented BZ#809172. Libvirt >= 0.8.0 has some hooks which enable you to run commands at specific times in the lifecycle of a guest which may be good for this but on RHEL 5 Libvirt is version 0.6.0 so I needed a different solution.