Network Swirching.

Discussions related to using the OSE version of VirtualBox.
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tal24
Posts: 1
Joined: 2. May 2016, 12:07

Network Swirching.

Post by tal24 »

Hi

My queries boil down to:
1/ Can one network card in Virtualbox send and receive to itself on a single subnet?
2/ Would Open VSwitch solve the issues?

I am having a switching issue that I am fairly sure I could fix by adding a network card or 2. However I would like to solve it either with the Virtualbox network set up, or if required by adding something like Open VSwitch.

I have a PC with Linux Mint 17.3 and Virtualbox 5 installed. The base system only has eth0.

I have 3 virtual machines set up:

1/ A linux SME 9.1 in gateway mode with 2 virtual NICs both set to Bridge. They have fixed IPs set up in SME.
2/ A Windows 7, again bridged. This is often accessed using RDP from the network.
3/ A Windows 10, again bridged. This is often accessed using RDP from the network.

Both windows machines do various background network maintenance. One is set to DHCP, the other has a fixed IP (this was done to see if changes there would make any difference). These need to be on the same subnet as the rest of the "real" network.

The SME box is set in gateway mode so has one internal IP address and a public address.
Everything works fine with all boxes visible on the local subnet and the one public addressable interface can be seen fine.

My issue occurs if I connect to the SME box from outside on its VPN connection. The VPN connection works fine and I can tunnel through it to external devices on that subnet.

However if I try to access either of the other 2 virtual machines on this host they are not found.

I guess this is quite a big ask on the poor network card as it is receiving on the public address then sending on a locally generated local address back to a different address all on the same subnet.

I would rather not add extra network cards as I want to be able to demo the functionality on a laptop.

I assume OVS should be installed and configured in the host OS. It seems very comprehensive, so any pointers to relevant tutorials or whatever would be gratefully received. I have found hundreds of paged and hours of you-tube and am slightly boggles as to where to start.

Thanks everyone.

Kevin
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