What are the vEthernet Switches in Windows and can / should I get rid of them?

I have a Windows 10 machine which I use with Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 and Hyper-V.

The installation of Hyper-V is new and after enabling it my "network connections" looks like this:

When I run ipconfig I can see:

Ethernet adapter vEthernet (New Virtual Switch): Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : attlocal.net 

Is my first and main ethernet adapter. My actual main adapter, the one called "Ethernet" does not even show up on the list.

Questions:

• What are these vEthernet Switches?
• Why is my computer not using the native Ethernet switch anymore?
• Are there performance implications do this?
• What are the various 172.x.x.x IP addresses assigned to the other Virtual switches?
• How does this affect local (127.0.0.1) loopback addressing?

Update

When I run ipconfig /all I still see all of the vEthernet switches but I do not see what used to be my default interface the one just called "Ethernet", listed.

Am I using it?

What is going on?

1 Answer

Vethernet switches are part of the system allowing network access for the VMs and other aspects of Hyper-V.

Do not remove or modify them unless you know what you are doing.