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I have a Dell D630 laptop that is running Windows 7 as the host os. Normally if you are using wifi and you plug in a lan cable the wifi disconnects because the laptop uses the connection with the highest bandwidth.

Is it possible to have the laptop direct the lan input to the guest os and have the wifi running for the host os? In this scenario the guest os could have total control over the lan input and it would not need to be accessable by the host os.

Thanks!

Yes, that would be a good idea. Set the NIC in the vm to bridged mode and bridge it to the wired NIC in the host. You do this in the settings of the vm from the VirtualBox manager.

Once you have this working you can go to the NIC properties of the host and set them so that they are dedicated to one or the other. On the NIC used by the guest OS clear all check boxes except VirtualBox Bridged Networking Driver. Only the guest can now use the NIC. On the other NIC clear the check mark from the VirtualBox Bridged Networking Driver (so that only the host OS can use it).

Thanks! That worked amazingly well and was very easy to set up. I tested it using both Virtualbox and VMWare and it worked with both products.

Works with Microsoft VPC as well.

pcm2a wrote:I have a Dell D630 laptop that is running Windows 7 as the host os. Normally if you are using wifi and you plug in a lan cable the wifi disconnects because the laptop uses the connection with the highest bandwidth.

Thanks!

This is no longer the case. Windows 7 prefers the wireless connection over the wired one. Windows XP did it the way you described. I don't exactly know how Vista handles it, but I guess it's the same as W7.

Yea, you're right. On the D630 with Win7 wifi takes precedence. On a Dell E6400 the lan does. Either way what I needed was the guest VM to utilize a lan network while the host OS used a totally separate wifi network. This works great at my house and I'll be testing it at my work pretty soon, it should be exciting.

I'd like to add that I posted this same topic in the VMWare community, for doing the same thing with VMWare, and it has gotten no response. I had to answer my own post. I guess the Virtualbox community is much more active and social.

pcm2a wrote:Yea, you're right. On the D630 with Win7 wifi takes precedence. On a Dell E6400 the lan does.

That's a software setting. Check the BIOS and wireless configuration tool. There is an option to disable wifi when a network cable is detected. We use Dell laptops at work, so I know this is a setting like that. Any normal Windows without additional software prefers wifi over cable. Quite annoying if you want to have high network speed, but use a bluetooth mouse at the same time. Turning wifi off with the switch kills bluetooth too.

Sasquatch wrote:Any normal Windows without additional software prefers wifi over cable.

Giving the wireless interface (or it's gateway) a higher metric than the ethernet interface at least makes my laptop prefer the wired connection - doing a "route print" on the command line should give you the current metrics if they're set to "auto"...

But that requires user intervention. As I said, default Windows without software or modifications prefer wifi.

Sasquatch wrote:But that requires user intervention. As I said, default Windows without software or modifications prefer wifi.

I really don't consider altering a standard Windows setting "additional software", but if since you seem to have meant the above... well.

Then again, changing a setting in the BIOS (same category IMHO) in this case is even worse since you lose Bluetooth as well.

Is there anyone that could assist me with doing this? I have spent about two days following the instructions and I seem to be missing a step. Thanks.

Help doing what?

You would be better off starting a new post and telling us exactly what you want to do rather than adding to an old and diverse post.