How to network Bridge on Windows

[venky4447]

Hi All,

Is it possible to make virtual network between guest and host without plugging network cable???

Thanks in Advance.

Regards,
Venky.

[iainwood]

I agree

we need to be able to access our guest over a network even if there isn't a physical network present - esential if you're using VB to run a web testing server!! (ideally with a static ip or some sort of name identifer)

[venky4447]

hi iainwood,

thanks for the reply,

Have you configured the virutal network without physical network,

can you please provide the instrunctions,

thanks in advance.

regards,
venky.

[Techno.Scavenger]

Yes, you can.

First, create a Microsoft loopback adapter.
Second, Create a VirtualBox Host Interface.
Bridge the loopback adapter and VirtualBox Host Interface.

Now, for stand alone machines without connection to the internet. Set the bridge ip address to any static ip..... do the same for the guest. Ensure they are on the same network/subnet. This should allow you to ping/connect between host and guest.

Now if you have another network interface and you want to have your guest to connect to the internet. Then do share your internet connection to the Bridged network. Network bridge should now be set to some 192.168.0.1 address. Leave this as is. Now on the guest machine set the interface to obtain IP. ICS should provide you with private IP and allow you to connect to the internet as well.

Regards,
TS

[spartan8103]

The link to the original tutorial does not seem to work. Has it been moved somewhere else?

[toninog]

hi,

Thanks for the great tutorial.
I have a requirement to have multiple network bridges in windows XP.

I have 3 NIC's in the PC and am running VBOX 1.6.2. I have linux as a VM and have created the 2 virtual VM interfaces. I can create a single bridge and the VM can see this and I can access the one network.

BUT I cannot create a second bridge so I can attach the second physical NIC to the second virtual NIC. The second physical NIC is on another network and I want to use the linux VM to bridge the two networks in a controlled manner.

Is it possible to create 2 bridges under windows XP? If so, how?

Thanks

[nicorac]

Any update on this topic?

I think VB is great in terms of performance and memory footage, but networking is still the worst part of it, at least on Win hosts.

Creating a VirtualBox TAP Adapter is annoying but affordable; using Windows Bridging feature to bridge it to real network connection is simply crap. It just works for only one connection... what if you need to setup firewall distros, like ClarkConnect?

It should be great to have something like "vmWare network bridging component", which transparently bridges networks with a simple-to-no user intervention.

Thanks for your great work

[toninog]

there has been no real joy running VBox on windows and creating multiple bridges under XP. I did an exhaustive search and spoke to many people - all resulted in failure. It is NOT possible to create multiple network bridges on WindowsXP (So says microsoft).

There is, however, and internal networking system within VBox, but this does not really allow you to attach to physical network interfaces in windowsXP.

SO - to solve the problem - I moved to linux and run windows as a guest. On linux I could create as many bridges as I needed and am currently running 5 bridges for 5 network cards.

I wish that VBOX would better their networking system, so that it can bind/use physical NIC's on the HOST.

[Virtual69]

Add me to the above posts.

VB definitely needs VMware style seamless bridging that can float from active interface to active interface.

[nicorac]

to solve the problem - I moved to linux and run windows as a guest

VB definitely needs VMware style seamless bridging

I agree with both of you.
I have Linux on my servers, running VB flawlessly.
Anyway, sometimes, a VB on a Win2003 server is needed..., and some configurations are completely unfeasible (see the ClarkConnect example).
Even on Linux it's not so easy to bridge real NICs and TAP interfaces together...

I know that reinventing the wheel is a boring task, but if the one we have (Win bridging) sucks, we really need a better one.

[dreamlusion]

Hi all.

Network bridging is used extensively to have VM Guests communicate with the Host and have internet access altogether, that is cool and clean I think.

But, I have run across some problems setting up a VPN server (Incoming Connection) on my Windows XP Host if a Network Bridge exists.

For some reason, VPN incoming connections seem to be blocked by the Windows Firewall. I have made a relevant post in the Windows Firewall newsgroup here.

What worked for me, is to have 2 adapters, one attached to NAT and one to a Host Interface (no Bridging this time)

Maybe it was something wrong with my configuration, but I though it would be a good idea to report this.

[minghia]

What am I using is a machine on the corporate LAN and I'm using a CENTOS guest on a windows XP machine. I've tried to run NAT but I can't get programs on my windows machine to communicate with my guest. If I set up the bridge I get no communication with the outside world in my guest machine. I note in the user guide that my corporate network may not allow this but it is work a try.

What my end goal is to have a windows program talk to a program running on my guest. Is this possible?

Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

[Sasquatch]

First, create a Microsoft loopback adapter.
Second, Create a VirtualBox Host Interface.
Bridge the loopback adapter and VirtualBox Host Interface.

You do not need to create a loopback interface, nor a bridge for this to work. The Host Interface is like a real interface, you can use it to connect to the Guest directly from the Host and vice versa. That leaves you with the option to use the bridge for a much better purpose.

What my end goal is to have a windows program talk to a program running on my guest. Is this possible?

Yes, this is possible. You create a Host Interface, put an IP address to it on the Host and Guest side and you have both way communication between the Host and the Guest. If you create a bridge so it can go to the corporate lan but you are unable to access the internet with it (even though you have a valid IP address from your company), check if you need to set a proxy. Maybe you even need to be on the company domain and use your username and password before you can connect to it. Only person who knows this, is your network administrator.

[minghia]

I have tried to set up the second adapter to be the Host Interface and the first adapter to be my NAT interface. I have tried to give the Host interface an IP address in CENTOS and assigned the same IP address to the connection in the control panel. The only way I could both of them to come up at the same time is create a bridge with only one enity in the Host Interace that virtualbox created.

If I understand correctly the steps I follow is create the Host Interface and assign it to one of the four adapters in Virtualbox. Next I assign the eth1 (for example) to have my desired fixed IP address say 192.168.0.100 under CENTOS. Do I also have to set the IP address under network connections to have this IP address?

Actually I don't need to access the internet from my VM but that would be nice. All I want is a test environment which I can connect via my windows program to one running on my VM.

Sorry if I seem a little confused but it seems that I am getting one step forward and two steps backwards. Thanks in advance.

[Sasquatch]

Host <=> Guest communication only:
Create a Host Interface, e.g. vbox0. Set it to one of the interfaces. Now set on vbox0 an IP address, like 192.168.0.100. On the Guest, set about the same, but the last number has to be different, e.g. 192.168.0.101. Of course both with the netmask of 255.255.255.0.
You now have both way communication between the Host and Guest system.

If you want to access the whole network like the Host can, clear the IP configuration set on the vbox0 interface. Bridge vbox0 to your physical interface. Best to use your wired connection, as wireless won't work, or only after some more advanced settings that might not even work properly. Give the bridge the same configuration as your physical adapter and put that one to manual settings.
If there is a DHCP active, the bridge should get an address if you set it for DHCP and your Guest should too. Else you can set it manually in the same range, but ask your Network Administrator first if there is an address available, or you might cause an IP conflict and the other station won't be able to work, along with your Guest until it's fixed.

Good luck.