[WorksForMe] Bridged networking fails on Win10 host (2 different Dell laptops)

[dmorris68]

EDIT: Problem solved. I posted later in this thread, but in summary it turns out we have two networks -- one provides multiple IP's, the other only 1 IP. These problem laptops were on the single IP network.

Ok, for the past couple of years I've had a very frustrating time with bridged networking on two different work laptops (both Dell, different models). I first thought it was my old laptop and so hung in until my new laptop arrived earlier this year. Then had the same issue with it, which I've been trying off and on to resolve and have had no luck. So finally giving up and coming here to ask for help.

Problem:
No guest OS I've tried (Windows 7 Pro, RHEL 6 & 7, CentOS, Ubuntu) can configure its bridged network over DHCP. It only gets the local 169.254.x.x address you get when you have no connection. NAT networking works. I believe at some point I also tried manually assigning IP/netmask/gateway/DNS and that failed too.

I can open a ticket but thought I'd try a forum discussion first, in case something jumps out as obvious. My assumption is it's an environmental thing with this work laptop (domain policy, company-installed driver, etc), but it used to work years ago (prior to my prior laptop; we're on 3-year lease refresh cycles and I've had this new one since January).

I've tried the following:

• Two different Dell laptops: the old one a Latitude E7440 originally with Win7 Pro, then upgraded to Win10 Pro; the new one a Dell Precision 3520 with Win10 Pro
• Every version of VirtualBox since 5.0, and this probably dates back to 4.x but I'm not sure; it used to work years ago but stopped at some point with the previous laptop and has not worked since
• Different guest OS' including Windows 7 Pro, various Linux distros, and even macOS; all startup and work fine, but can't get a bridged connection, only NAT
• Host Networking also fails; guests still get a 169.254.x.x IP, not the host's 192.168.x.x IP.
• NAT does work, but I need to be able to access VMs from the rest of the network without port mapping
• Uninstalled and reinstalled VirtualBox many times, as Administrator and normally. No difference.
• Tried all network adapters - both laptop and dock wired connections, as well as the WiFi adapter
• Happens on both home and work networks
• With and without Cisco AnyConnect client for VPN and Web Security, as I'd read of past issues with it
• Bridged networking was enabled at install and I can configure bridged networking in settings
• Logs indicate no obvious issues (to me anyway)
• No errors reported ANYWHERE that I can find
• Read multiple forum posts and open tickets on bridged issues; all have either been resolved, were specific to that user, or had errors or other characteristics that I don't have. I cannot find a resolution that works for me.

Current host configuration:

• Dell Precision 3520
• - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6820HQ CPU @ 2.70GHz
• - 16GB RAM
• - Dell 180W Thunderbolt Dock
• - Dock Ethernet: Realtek USB GbE Family Controller
• - Laptop Ethernet: Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (5) I219-LM
• - Laptop WiFi: Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265
• Windows 10 Pro - Version 1709 (OS Build 16299.371)
• VirtualBox 5.2.10 r122406 w/ Extension Pack
• Corporate AV is Trend Micro, however it's currently not installed; I've seen this behavior with and without it
• Current guest is Win 7 Pro 64-bit, but issue is same with every guest attempted

Attaching log from latest attempt to boot the Win7 Pro guest, as well as the list of installed applications.

installed_software.txt

Installed software list

(9.74 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

Windows 7 Pro-2018-05-10-13-10-19.log

VBox log from booting Win7 Pro guest

(89.9 KiB) Downloaded 7 times

[BillG]

You say that this is a work laptop. Does this happen when connected to your business network?

Some company networks are configured to only allow one IP connection per port. If this is the case, bridged networking will always fail.

[dmorris68]

Yes it's a work laptop, but our ports aren't restricted to one IP. And as I mentioned, it also happens on my home network, and wireless as well as wired.

[socratis]

Forget wireless for a moment. Concentrate only on the Bridged-over-wired. In fact, disable the wireless card from your host. And BTW, when I'm talking wired, I don't mean the docked one, I mean the actual physical Ethernet port on your computer. Keep it as simple as possible.

If you fail to get an IP like that, start searching what's going on in your network. What software might be there that prevents this from happening. I don't honestly remember your typical Bridged-over-wired connection to fail. And by typical I mean no antivirus, firewalls, proxies, network filters, redirectors, DHCP filters, MAC filters, hour filters, etc. As plain and boring as it gets.

[ausadba]

I use bridged adaptor for internet access (Attached to my Wifi adaptor, because who uses LAN these days? I would even disable LAN permanently if its not being used)
And I used a HOST ONLY adaptor with a static IP under the subnet of the VBox Host adaptor.
So If my host adaptor (Virtualbox virtual adaptor) on the host machine has been configured with IP 192.168.56.1, I use a static IP like 192.168.56.2 for the VM.
And the Bridged adaptor using DHCP.

And hey, make sure firewall, iptables etc are disabled (easiest) or configured to accept connections. Install openssh if required too.

[socratis]

I use bridged adaptor for internet access (Attached to my Wifi adaptor, because who uses LAN these days?

@ausadba
You don't seem to understand the problem at its fundamentals; Bridged-over-WiFi is NOT supposed to work, it's not in the specification. So don't give people the improper advice when we're trying to troubleshoot things like Bridged-over-WiFI. It's perfectly possible, legal, and actually more conforming to the standards it it does NOT work.

And yes, lots of people use LAN, including yours truly. And I will continue to do so until wireless gets to 1 Gb/s speeds. Ever tried to back up over WiFi? Not as speedy...

[ausadba]

Do you mean bridged networking attached to the host wifi adaptor not supposed to work?
@dmorris68, are you trying to access the internet from your VM, or something more?

[dmorris68]

To suggest LAN is dead is silly. My entire house is wired with Ethernet drops in every room, some rooms several. WiFi is a very poor substitute for a LAN connection if you can get one, as socratis says. At home WiFi only serves mobile devices. All devices capable of being wired, are wired. I have a 24-port gigabit switch in the attic, another 24-port in my office, and small GbE switches at every TV in the house to support all attached media devices (SmartTV, Tivo, PS4, BR player, Roku, etc).

@socratis: I hear you on WiFi. I only tried WiFi out of desperation to see if *something* would work. I never use WiFi when I have a readily accessible LAN connection, and my laptops are configured to disable WiFi when LAN is connected. I have tried each network adapter, both dock and laptop, on home network and at work, which is why I feel like it has to be something with the laptop itself. We don't have any *new* software that I'm aware of compared to when it used to work, and I tried to get this laptop to work when it was brand-new and had very little installed. I was hoping something might jump out at you guys or there be something I just forgot to set/check. If I can't figure it out, I guess I may consider a full OS-reset and try it again when it's basically a virgin OS. I'll also check around again with some co-workers whom I'm pretty sure still work with bridged networking, meaning they'd have the same corporate software. But as I mentioned, even with AV and the AnyConnect client removed, it still didn't work.

@ausadba: Internet would be nice at this point LOL, I'm just trying to get an IP on the local LAN. I can't get anywhere until I get an IP, but the guest acts as if there's no network connection available. Also, as I mentioned, host only network yields the same results. NAT is the only thing that works.

[socratis]

@dmorris68
It's not a matter of what you have installed (mostly) on your computer, unless we're talking about the Bridged-over-Ethernet. Can you try that? That should work right out of the box, unless:

• There's no DHCP server to get your address from.
• You have misconfigured your TCP/IP setup in the guest if using manual assignment.
• An overzealous antivirus/filtering software somewhere on your LAN.
• A proxy server(?)

Now, why I'm telling you to avoid Bridged-over-WiFi for the moment... @ausadba, this could help you too.

Bridged over wireless don't always play nice. Bridged networking is outside the WLAN specification. Bridging to wireless is not really bridging. The guest shares the MAC of the host and the host does a sort of MAC-NAT translation based on IP addresses. Promiscuous mode doesn't exist in the official WLAN specifications. It may or may not work. Some combinations of Routers/Access Points, WLAN cards and drivers work, some don't. See: Bridging & Wifi - Supported hardware and add your experience. For example, it works fine in my home, but not in my office. Same laptop, same VM. Different router. No dice.

And here's a more technical explanation, pay special attention to the last paragraph:

Many wifi routers now try to use unicast link-level destination for broadcast/multicast IP destination. The reasons are explained in http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-vyncke ... ficient-01 - that is in context of IPv6, but the same logic applies to IPv4 (IPv6 is hit harder since it relies more on multicast). Behavior varies between wifi routers, so you may get bridged setup working with some and not working with others.

If the wifi router that is not working for you just uses unicast delivery for multicast, then 4.3.16 should help (a typical packet capture can be seen in #12207). In this case the host was receiving DHCP replies intended for the guest (broadcast IP, but unicast to host MAC), but was not rewriting MAC address correctly, so the guest was not receiving the packet. If you plug another computer into the wired port of the router to capture DHCP exchange as seen on the wired side, you would see the same DHCP replies sent to ethernet broadcast on the wired connection. So this is just an optimization for wifi that some routers do.

Unfortunately - and this is orthogonal to multicast/unicast issue above - some routers will send DHCP replies to broadcast IP, but to the unicast client MAC address (i.e. guest MAC in this case) fetched from the DHCP request. These packets will never be even seen by the host. I'm afraid the packet captures in comment:14 is an example of that. In the ethernet capture you can see DHCP replies unicast to guest and in the wireless capture you don't see any replies at all. I have one router like this (though it at least uses ethernet broadcast for its DHCP NAKs, so you can see something in the wireless capture .

This latter kind of routers has problems with DHCP, but usually you can work around it by not using DHCP and using static IP instead. E.g. I cannot connect to that router of mine with DHCP, but if I use static IP in the guest then I get normal connectivity. Yes, this is suboptimal , but better than no connectivity if you must use bridged for some reason.

[dmorris68]

@dmorris68
It's not a matter of what you have installed (mostly) on your computer, unless we're talking about the Bridged-over-Ethernet. Can you try that? That should work right out of the box, unless:

• There's no DHCP server to get your address from.
• You have misconfigured your TCP/IP setup in the guest if using manual assignment.
• An overzealous antivirus/filtering software somewhere on your LAN.
• A proxy server(?)

That's the problem -- I *have* been trying bridged over ethernet. It does not work, either at home nor the office. There's DHCP servers and no port restrictions. At home, my desktop VBox installation works with bridged over ethernet just fine, but not this laptop. I can plug any physical device into the network and get an IP. I can also manually configure IP's all day long on physical devices and other VM hosts (RHEV for instance) in the same office without issue. It's only VBox bridged or host connections (over ethernet) that I'm having this issue with.

[socratis]

There's definitely something going one then with your Bridged setup. Things that could go wrong:

• Too many filters in the TCP/IP section. Search the webs for "upper filter and lower filter". I've seen things "blocked" because of these settings. From network, to USB, to CDs, to <NameIt>. You may find some more while you're doing your research...
• Installation of the Bridged adapter filter failing. Usually we've seen this with overzealous AntiVirus software. Uninstall (not just disable) any/all AV software (except the Windows built-in one), and follow the procedure below:
  1. Uninstall VirtualBox. Your VMs are going to be untouched. Reboot.
  2. You may want to clean up your registry and/or filesystem at this point. CCleaner is a freeware utility that could help you. Mind the installation, it comes with "offers" from 3rd parties, known as "bundleware". Also, check out Device Cleanup program that helps you to remove any unused devices from your computer.
  3. Download (if you haven't already) the latest VirtualBox and its matching ExtPack. Store them in a common location, i.e. not on "Desktop", or "Documents", but to "Public/Downloads" for example.
  4. Locate the downloaded file in Windows Explorer. Right-click on the installer and select "Run-as-Administrator", even if you are the administrator. At the end of the installation, choose to "Start Oracle VM VirtualBox". Do not worry if your VMs do not show up.
  5. If you're going to install the ExtPack, go to File » Preferences » Extensions. Click on the icon with the orange, down-pointing arrow on the right. Select the ExtPack from the previous steps.
  6. Quit VirtualBox. Re-start VirtualBox as you would normally, i.e. from the Desktop shortcut or the Start menu.
  7. Update the Guest Additions (GAs) in your guest(s), if the GAs are available for a specific guest.

[dmorris68]

Wanted to follow up to say THE MYSTERY HAS BEEN SOLVED! And of course it was not a VBox issue.

Turns out, we have two networks. We're in an older facility that wasn't completely upgraded when we moved in, so that network is still a "slow" 10/100 Fast Ethernet network. We added a separate gigabit PoE network for our Cisco VOIP phones. Each desktop phone has an extra switch port that many people use to get gigabit bandwidth to their computers. That's the port my laptop Ethernet cable is plugged into. Turns out either the phone PoE switches, or the phones themselves, will only give out one IP (in addition to the phone itself).

OTOH our 10/100 network, which every other computer, including my desktop, is plugged into does NOT have this limitation. I did not realize/remember that my laptop was plugged into a separate network and thus could not understand why the PC next to me worked with bridging while my laptop didn't. I moved the laptop ethernet connection to the 10/100 network and VBox now bridges fine. I must have been mistaken about it not working from home either, although I do remember trying and failing but there must have been some other reason. I intend to confirm that the next time I take this laptop home.

So now at least I have the option -- I can choose either GbE or bridged networking, just not both. Kinda sucks but at least it explains this problem that I've struggled with for awhile now. We expect to be moving to another facility within the next couple years, so hopefully we'll get some upgraded networking.

[socratis]

Great, thanks for the letting us know. Marking as [WorksForMe].