vlan setup

[AlphaTech]

Hi,
I have been browsing the web for weeks on how to setup vlan in Windows 7 or Windows 10 in Virtualbox. It looks like that the Intel driver in the guest vm does not support vlan. I read few forums that some of you have been successfully setup vlan. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[mpack]

Setup vlan? Are you talking about "virtual lan" as in VirtualBox virtual networking?

If yes then the guest will be connected to a network, it doesn't really know or care if that network is via vlan, a copper Ethernet lan, or a WiFi lan. All the guest cares about is that the network can be accessed via the network card it sees. The guest OS does have drivers for the network card provided you didn't change it, that's why that network card was selected as the default in the guest OS template.

If you are talking about some kind of physical network configuration then a quick Google seems to indicate to me that this isn't a feature of the network card, it's a feature of the network.

Moved to "Windows Guests" since Windows Hosts is not an appropriate forum for discussing how to configure a guest.

[AlphaTech]

Thanks for your reply. I agree, I was generic about my question. I have setup a virtual lan on my physical switch. My ultimate goal is to have a guess machine being able to connect to a virtual lan while my host use the default vlan. In a vmware world, I would assign in the virtual switch a vlan of 4 per example and when I run the virtual machine it would use the subnet associated with that vlan. What I want to accomplish is to have my host on the 192.168.0.XXX while my guest would be on another subnet defined by that vlan that I setup, as per example the vlan 4 is on the subnet 192.168.2.XXX so my virtual machine would have an ip address of 192.168.2.XXX. How do I accomplish it? Perhaps my confusion is that I would assign a vlan number on the network card in the guest but default network card does not have a vlan that I can setup.

Thanks for your response.

[scottgus1]

the Intel driver in the guest vm does not support vlan.

Could be possible it doesn't. As Mpack pointed out the guest OS has drivers for the default network card chosen by Virtualbox. Those guest OS drivers are the bare-minimum drivers provided by the card manufacturer to the guest OS manufacturer so the OS has likely drivers to distribute to the public. You can change the guest OS drivers to get better functionality, or you can use a different card that Virtualbox can provide and provide that new card's manufacturer drivers to get more functionality.

I'l give you a "for instance": In my earlier days I ran some XP guests. I wanted gigabit in the guest to match the host's gigabit connection. But Virtualbox provided a 100Mbit "PCnet-Fast III" for the XP guest as default. I did not know that Virtualbox doesn't limit the 100Mbit card to 100Mbit, VB will feed data to the guest's network as fast as the host network can bring it in, so the 100Mbit card in the guest would perform as fast as the host's gigabit card. Not knowing this, and also not knowing that XP has built-in drivers for the "Intel PRO/1000 T Server" gigbit card, I switched the virtual network card to the "Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop" gigabit card, for which XP did not have built-in drivers. I got drivers from Intel's website and installed them in the guest, and the MT Desktop card ran fine in the guest.

[Perryg]

IIRC the Intel virtual adapter strips vlan tags. Try with paravirt ( VirtIO ) and see if it works.

[mpack]

A standard network card talks Ethernet - it has no idea what an IP address is, so I can't see how the features of the network card can be relevant. You seem to be discussing the features of the networking stack provided by a OS, or perhaps features specific to VMWare.

On the latter point, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with VMWare features either, so you'll need to describe your requirements without reference to other software. Or, you can see the available VirtualBox network modes described in the User Manual, chapter 6.

Edit:  Perry posted while I was composing this. By all means try his suggestion.

[socratis]

What I want to accomplish is to have my host on the 192.168.0.XXX while my guest ...would have an ip address of 192.168.2.XXX.

How about leaving your host as is (assuming that it is already in the 192.168.0.### network) and use Bridged mode networking with a manually set IP/Mask/Gateway of 192.168.2.### for the VM?

[Martin]

It looks like you need Intel PROSet with Advanced Network Services for 802.1Q VLAN tagging with Intel adapters in Windows:
https://communities.intel.com/thread/40955

[AlphaTech]

All, I did all that. I'm sure you all are familiar with vlan. I'm not an expert, actually a noob on this an I may be wrong. My understanding is that you need to setup a vlan at layer 2, normally it is set at the network card level. I would not need to setup an IP, it would use the physical switch to tag the vlan in question. I tried to change the network card but nothing work, The few network cards that utilize vlan are Intel Pro/1000 model CT, EF, ET PF and PT. Let me know if you are able to successfully install one of them. More info, I can not post please google this here Intel Advanced Network Services VLANs

[AlphaTech]

I have attached a picture of what I should see when it is properly setup with a proper card.

[scottgus1]

Virtualbox emulates Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop, MT Server, and T Server. Also a couple old PCnet-Fasts. If none of these cards are able to recognize the VLAN system you have (You'll have to google them to check) then you can't do VLAN in Virtualbox with these cards. The only other option is virtio-net, as Perry recommended. I don't know anything about VLANs or virtio-net. That will be another googling session for you.

[AlphaTech]

I may agree with you, after trying so many things it looks like it can not be done. Although, I'm very surprised that Oracle and virtualbox does not update these cards or integrate vlan on it. I have been using this application for many years, one of the best out there and now disappointed that they do not have this feature. It is like having a Ferrari body without the engine

I appreciated all your help, great forum by the way.

[scottgus1]

Oracle's development on free Virtualbox comes from developments on Oracle's pay-for virtualization system which is derived from Virtualbox. The license to begin getting developer support on Virtualbox starts at $6100 (that's $61 per license, 100 license minimum). The developers have said they have their hands over-full handling Oracle's customers' development needs, so we should not expect enhancements suggested by free users to be high on the list unless the enhancements coincide with rich paying customers' needs. That said, users can contribute code, and free Virtualbox is open-source, so someone could figure out how to implement what they'd like Virtualbox to have and submit a code suggestion.

It appears that Oracle's customers haven't desired a VLAN-enabled card in the guest OS, so the developers haven't made one. Maybe there's another way to solve the problem? Or something wrong in the interpretation of Intel's websites that leads one to think the Virtualbox cards don't support VLAN with the Intel website drivers installed, where one really might? As an experiment, I would try downloading the Intel drivers for the three Intel cards, getting the driver installers into the guest, then changing the virtual NIC to the appropriate card and installing the drivers, and see what happens.

[scottgus1]

I have setup a virtual lan on my physical switch

One other thought: Are we sure that this is really working?

[socratis]

It is like having a Ferrari body without the engine

Maybe because the guys with the "Ferrari" that have enough money to buy licenses for VirtualBox (a.k.a. customers) don't care about that specific "engine"?

But, I'll repeat again my suggestion, only because you didn't address it: why don't you setup the VM with a fixed IP address in the 192.168.2.### range? Because it doesn't say 'vlan'? Or because it doesn't work? Or something else?