Host OS packet loss with host interface networking

[ieure]

Whenever I enable Host Interface Networking on VirtualBox, I get intermittent packet loss on my host OS. I'll get periods where everything is fine, but then it will spike up to 20% and disrupt my SSH sessions on the host.

It doesn't matter what network driver I select for the guest. It's not my connection; if I quit VirtualBox (or just set it to NAT), my connection is extremely stable (0-1% packet loss). As soon as I switch to Host Interface and boot the VM, I get the packet loss.

Details:
Host is a MacBookPro3,1 running OS X 10.5.6 & VirtualBox 2.1.4.
Guest is Debian Lenny with the VBox guest additions.
I'm connected via WiFi to an AirPort Extreme, using WPA2. There are no cable drops, so a wired connection isn't an option.

Has anyone else seen this?

[vbox4me2]

Is it possible to try WEP for a day to see what happens then? there are issues with WPA2 connections being disrupted when there is an overload of traffic or too many bad packets.

[ieure]

Is it possible to try WEP for a day to see what happens then? there are issues with WPA2 connections being disrupted when there is an overload of traffic or too many bad packets.

No, I have no control over the configuration of the access points.

There is zero additional traffic involved. The packet loss starts when I fire up the VM. It continues while the VM is sitting there 100% idle. There’s DHCP and perhaps some NTP traffic. It’s not like there’s some crushing flood of packets hitting the wire here.

[ebelin]

Same problem here - MacBookPro3,1 wifi, wpa (or wpa2). My guest is opensolaris-11-2008 and it effectively shuts networking on both host and guest. I'd be happy to provide some logs or whatever to help diagnose the problem. Need instructions though.

Interesting observation is that solaris runs seemingly faster on this macbookpro than it is on my macpro.

[yaconsult]

I'm seeing the same problem with wired internet on OS X latest.

Using NAT, everything is fine. Rebooting and switching to host networking results in massive packet loss - it's unusable.

Host is OS X 10.5.6. Guest is Fedora 10 with latest updates. Guest is configured as DHCP client as is the host.

[mabian]

Thank you thank you thank you.

We were struggling with our Windows XP/2003 guests not being able to connect and transfer data on the net in host mode with Mac OSX 10.5 host.

We have then activated AirPort and used it exclusively for VB network cards.

Everything is working flawlessly now.

Thus, it seems a Mac OSX/VB problem using the same physical network card for host and guest in host networking (to be sure we should try swapping = Airport for Mac networking, Ethernet for VB but we have already spent enough time with this issue).

Hope next VB version solves the problem.

Thanks again,
Mario