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Hello,

I wanted to set up my guest WinXP with bridged network adapter, because it needs to use network printer that will want to communicate back to the client. Also, I want to share a folder in Windows that would be accessible from other PCs in LAN. So, I need a setup where the guest OS is respectably registered in the LAN.

I went on to configure the VM network adapter: Attached to: Bridged adapter. I assumed I don't need to do anything more than that.

So, I booted the guest, checked it's IP address, it was happily got from my router, it was unique, so it seemed to be happy day. However, I soon found out that the Internet on guest acts weird: most of the websites did not load, but their domains were pingable. Oddly enough, I could still open my local countries Google (www.google.lv) and even download the google toolbar with no problems. At the same time, there were no problems opening any website on the host, so it was not internet connections problem. I installed Firefox, and it acted all the same (the default localized Firefoxized Google page opened up though).

Please, can you suggest what I am doing wrong, maybe some simple settings would fix this. Maybe you can suggest some ways how to diagnose the issue? Thanks!

Check your router DHCP settings with what your Host is getting, most likely the Host has fixed DNS entries pointing directly at external DNS's instead of the router.

The automatically acquired DNS server addresses are the same on host and guest. If I go to console in WinXP and ping random domain, its IP address is resolved correctly, and I also get ping reply from most of the hosts (perhaps except those who have disabled the ping protocol).

I created a simple html + one image webpage, put it online, and it opened up (on the guest) rather slowly. Maybe larger sites don't open up just because the download is very slow, I don't know, I have no idea how to test this.

A few other things that you can try:
Use the IntelPRO/1000 MT adapter in the VBox settings for the Windows guest. ( you will need to make sure that you have the right drivers or even get them first before changing)
Also make sure that you do not have a firewall issue on the host or the guest.

As for setting anything in the guest network settings if you leave it on DHCP you should not need to do anything unless you want to set it for static. In that case you will need to set the ip address, netmask, gateway and DNS manually. Make sure that you stay in the address scheme of your host network.

Ok, I've discovered some more info:

In my previous setup, I've been binding the bridged adapter to the eth0 interface. And the browsers behaved as I've described in the original post. My laptop was connected to the network via ethernet cable.

Today, I connected WiFi connection, disconnected the cable, and changed the bridged adapter Name setting to wlan0. And, the browsers in VM can browse the web with no problems! Browsing on the host is unaffected. It all works the same, when I pull the cable out.

Now, I'm puzzled. Why the behaviour is different, depending on the selected interface? Maybe I am choosing wrong network connection for the VM? Isn't the bridged adapter the right setting when I want the VM to behave as rightful member of the local network? What is the pan0 setting (the 3rd one in the Name list)?

And last, can't VM just use the host as an ethernet hub, whatever is the way it's connected to the LAN? If the guest uses DHCP to acquire IP settings from the router, who cares how it's connected to it? I find it somewhat awkward that now I need to be connected via WiFi to have the Internet in the guest function properly.