Intermittent Host-Only Network Latency

[curtisjk]

Hi,

VirtualBox Versions 6.1.10/6.0.22
macOS Catalina 10.15.5

I have migrated my development environment to a brand new MacBook Pro 16", 2.3GHz i9, 16GB Ram (macOS Catalina 10.15.5) - this includes a VirtualBox VM which hosts an Oracle TimesTen database. This sits on a host-only network vboxnet0 with a static IP 192.168.56.2. However I am having some issue where the network interface has intermittent latency (ping showing RTT of 0.1ms - 30ms):

Code: Select all

64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=148 ttl=64 time=21.880 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=149 ttl=64 time=16.963 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=150 ttl=64 time=14.261 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=151 ttl=64 time=14.053 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=152 ttl=64 time=9.411 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=153 ttl=64 time=6.322 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=154 ttl=64 time=4.346 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=155 ttl=64 time=0.664 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=156 ttl=64 time=0.616 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=157 ttl=64 time=0.595 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=158 ttl=64 time=0.406 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=159 ttl=64 time=0.319 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=160 ttl=64 time=0.434 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=161 ttl=64 time=38.011 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=162 ttl=64 time=36.242 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=163 ttl=64 time=35.711 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=164 ttl=64 time=31.563 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=165 ttl=64 time=31.855 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=166 ttl=64 time=28.345 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=167 ttl=64 time=23.454 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=168 ttl=64 time=20.095 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=169 ttl=64 time=18.687 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=170 ttl=64 time=15.752 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=171 ttl=64 time=12.623 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=172 ttl=64 time=12.378 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=173 ttl=64 time=8.952 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=174 ttl=64 time=4.255 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=175 ttl=64 time=0.601 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=176 ttl=64 time=0.199 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=177 ttl=64 time=0.172 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=178 ttl=64 time=0.273 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=179 ttl=64 time=0.164 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=180 ttl=64 time=38.049 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=181 ttl=64 time=37.329 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=182 ttl=64 time=32.189 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=183 ttl=64 time=30.788 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.56.2: icmp_seq=184 ttl=64 time=30.780 ms

I have observed both activity on the host and VM and cannot observe any resource starvation. I have attempted to increase resource on the VM with no luck. I have even gone as far as reinstalling the VM OS from scratch with CentOS 7 and the latest VirtualBox Additions.

I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled VirtualBox a couple of times both at 6.0.22 and 6.1.10 (manually deleting all traces of VirtualBox after running the uninstall script) but had no luck. The only thing I can think of now is a reinstall of macOS but I'd rather not do that if it can be avoided.

This latency is massively adding delay to my workflow due to increased RTT in database queries. I have previously run Virtualbox 6.0 on similar hardware (this new MacBook is a replacement for a faulty one) and did not have any issue.

Any advice or things to check would be greatly appreciated.

Curtis

[curtisjk]

I think I may have tracked this issue down (or at least mitigated against it) by starting the VM headless.

I made a number of changes last week including changing the network adapter type and starting headless which resolved the issue until I started it again today with the console window. Restarting the VM headless has given me acceptable ping times.

Not sure if this is a bug or something which can be mitigated against? This Mac does have a dedicated GPU so not sure if that is a contributing factor.