Host-only IPv6 fields disabled

[NewSpaceIsFun]

Hi, I'm a new VirtualBox user (long time VMPlayer) and have a problem setting up a host-only IPv6 environment for testing between images on same Win7 host.

Background: I am researching IPv6 networking/troubleshooting. My employer doesn't have IPv6 routing/DNS, so I found a cool blog where someone used 2 VirtualBox images and a host-only IPv6 network to learn troubleshooting techniques etc. Should allow me to circumvent red tape...

Problem: On the first page of above blog the user has VBManager->Network->HostOnlyNetwork dialog that has *both* IPv4 and IPv6 fields enabled for input. However in my case only the IPv4 fields are enabled for input (ref attached image):

only_ipv4_enabled.png (23.32 KiB) Viewed 6976 times

Changes made and more info:
1. VM Version 5.1.22 r115126 (Qt5.6.2)
2. Host is Win7 laptop

Code: Select all

   Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:
   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . : XXX
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::d7:7a96:e454:553a%14
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXX.16
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXX.1

3. Enabled IPv6 support in VBManager->Network->NatNetworks.
4. Laptops adapter shows IPv4 and IPv6 support enabled. Link local for IPv6 only.
5. The VB network adapter shows up on Windows NetworkConnections with IPv4 and IPv6 enabled, and the VBNetdriver is also enabled.

At this point I dont know if I'm missing something basic, or there's a product problem. Suggestions/recommendations appreciated.

[socratis]

I'm sure that this is not going to help you too much, but the tooltip in that dialog reads:

IPv6 Address: Holds the host IPv6 address for this adapter if IPv6 is supported.
IPv6 Network Mask Length: Holds the host IPv6 network mask prefix length for this adapter if IPv6 is supported.

I have a triple boot Win system (7, 7x64, 10x64) and the IPv6 option is disabled in all of them. I have an OSX host and it's enabled there. I finally tried it in a Mint VM and it's also available.

I tried looking through the manual and the documentation, but I came up with nothing. I don't know, but something tells me that it's not available for Windows? I haven't enabled something in Windows? I don't know, I'm mainly an OSX person...

[NewSpaceIsFun]

Thanks for tip/hint socratis - not sure on what the limitation is, but after some more testing I just got it working using "internal network". Here's the particulars:

Setup: Same VB version#, laptop host/etc as listed in my original post.

I noted that the blog with the IPv6 instructions was referencing VB version#>4.2 and some of the GUI screenshots weren't an exact
match, so I took a deeper dive on the VB networking doc. Internal networking sounded like a good test option and after copying
a base Ubuntu image that only had an IPv6 nic (so I had 2 images to test with) and changing the MAC so each was unique I configured them
both for "internal network". I confirmed that each booted image had a unique MAC address and unique IPv6-based IP. Then I just
pinged between each image using "ping6 -I xyz aa.bb.cc.dd.ee.ff" and they were able to see each other. The base Ubuntu image was
already pretty much configured for IPv6 so then the only thing left was the VB "internal network" step. At this point I could probably
add a DNS to make pinging/testing easier - I'm not a network engineer so I really only care about app-centric resolution/troubleshooting
stuff. Doc says VB has a built-in dhcp server, and also that performance for "internal network" is little bit higher than the other modes so
it probably will meet my needs (laptop is fast) for basic app testing in IPv6 env. I'll probably run into more problems when I start
doing dual stack testing with Tomcat/Oracle/mixed clients/myApp..but that's what this research was all about.

This is probably the excerpt that clued me in to the solution:

Internal networks are created automatically as needed, i.e. there is no central configuration. Every internal network is identified simply by its name. Once there is more than one active virtual network card with the same internal network ID, the VirtualBox support driver will automatically "wire" the cards and act as a network switch. The VirtualBox support driver implements a complete Ethernet switch and supports both broadcast/multicast frames and promiscuous mode.