Host Network Team

[DC187]

Does Virtual Box have issues bridging to a host with teamed network cards?

I ask since recently I setup a teamed connection since I perform a lot of file transfers between multiple devices, however it seems I can't get any network access on any guests whilst using said team.
If I dissolve the team and bridge to a physical adapter all works fine.

Really I suppose I'm looking to know if it should indeed work or not. If not I'll use a product that can

For info the network adapters are both onboard an ASUS L1N64-SLI board which uses the 680a chipset. I'm using the latest nForce drivers too.
My host OS is Windows Vista Ultimate x64

[Perryg]

I really don't see this working unless the adapted software appears as a network (hardware) connection in the guest VM network settings.
You can add up to 8 Virtual Network adapters though (4 in the gui and 4 from cli). Select one actual NIC for one adapter and the other NIC for the second adapter. Will this work for you?

[Sasquatch]

Perry, I don't think you understand the problem here. A teamed interface is a 'virtual' interface, like a bond on Linux. Both interfaces work together to get higher throughput. Once the interfaces are teamed on the Host, you can't select one of them for use in Bridged mode.

I think the main problem here is that VB doesn't see the team, because it doesn't have the Bridged service available for it. Did you install VB before or after you created the teamed interface? If it's before, you might want to add the Bridge service to the team, or repair the VB installation which should add the service to the teamed interface. Hopefully, that works.

[DC187]

Thanks for the replies, however I have created the team prior to install. I can confirm that the bridged service is installed to the teamed interface and enabled.

From the drop down list of network adapters to bind to I can select 3 NIC's, 2x physical adapters and 1x Teamed adapter (it's named a virtual adapter but haven't mentioned that as I don't want to confuse the teamed adapter with virtualbox virtual adapters if you get my drift).

The two physical adapters also have the Bridged service installed however all the services and properties are disabled on these whilst in a teamed configuration.

As I say if I dissolve the team thus returning to 2x separate physical adapters I can then successfully communicate over either one of them.

I may just go and buy an additional NIC for sole use by VB since NIC's are dirt cheap these days, however it would be useful to take advantage of the increased bandwidth by using a network team for my guest OS's aswell.

[DC187]

Just had a thought, is there any point in me pursuing this, I'm guessing I'm not going to get 2Gbps in my guest OS's even if I can bridge to the teamed adapter anyway.

Think I'll just buy a 3rd NIC instead...

[Sasquatch]

Fun things with Teamed interfaces, buy 2 additional NICs and team them in the Guest itself . That should work.