virtio-net?

[memilanuk]

Hello,

I just upgraded from 3.0.12 to 3.1.0 and was in the process of setting up a new guest. I started exploring the new options and saw the para-virtualized network (virtio-net) option. I did some basic digging through the help and on the forum, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

...then VirtualBox does not virtualize common networking hardware (that is supported by common guest operating systems out of the box). Instead, VirtualBox then expects a special software interface for virtualized environments to be provided by the guest, thus avoiding the complexity of emulating networking hardware and improving network performance.

Does this mean that the guest can now access the physical hardware on the host? Specifically, does it mean that the guest can now 'see' a wifi adapter on the host as a wifi adapter, instead of as another ethernet NIC?

Thanks,

Monte

[MarkCranness]

No, it just means that TCP/IP communication between the guest and host is more efficient because there is a direct hand-off of TCP/IP packets, rather than VirtualBox having to emulate a network card, with virtual interrupts, virtual ports, virtual DMA etc.
All that interrupt/port/DMA stuff wastes CPU cycles.
See: http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Virtio

[memilanuk]

Ah. So... still no way to have a guest OS 'see' a wireless connection as just that... wireless? Specifically see the signal strength, test the encryption (WEP vs. WPA, etc.)?

Thanks,

Monte

[MarkCranness]

No, no way for the guest to see a wireless connection as wireless.

[memilanuk]

Hmmm... well, it still works pretty doggone well otherwise.

Thanks,

Monte

[Technologov]

maybe if you have USB wireless adapter, then guest will see it as wireless...

[Entity]

Yup. Usb wifi are ok, well, at least those that don't have usb compatibility problems. Last time I checked, no Zydas card would work on any guest/host, but rtl8187 was ok.

[dagar]

I have a centos 5.4 x86_64 guest and when I tried to change the the network type to virtio, the guest does not detect it. What changes to the guest did you have to do ?