Vbox Adapter and VM ip conflict

[zoe]

Hi all,
My host machine is using Windows 7 Home as OS & the VM within Virtualbox uses host-only adapter and I have manually set the static ip address of 10.0.0.2 /24 and defauly gateway is 10.0.0.1/24 which is the ip address of the router in GNS3.
Now when I went to my host machine network connections window and changed the ip of the host-only adapter to 10.0.0.2 /24 and d.g. to 10.0.0.1/24 and then clicked "Ok" it gave error message of "IP address conflict"!
Do I need to change the ip address of the Virtual machines to a ip address that belongs to the same network in which my host machine belongs to - which in my case is 192.168.1.x network and my host machine has 192.168.1.1 as default gateway .
I am really confused. Does the host-only ethernet adapter acts as a router which connects my host machine to the Virtualbox Virtual Machines?
If someone could at least clarify the last point I will be greatly gratified to him/her.
Thanks in advance
With Regards

[noteirak]

The Host-Only act as a SWITCH, and NOT as a router. Virtualbox doesn't do any routing actually. So if you put two machines with the same IP (Guest + Host), you will of course have IP conflicts.

[BillG]

The host only interface on the host machine is not a normal NIC. It is a virtual interface which allows the host OS to connect to a virtual machine over the virtual network/switch called Host Only. It cannot connect to the physical network where your 192.168.1 subnet is.

I have never used GNS3 but I gather that it is a router emulator program. Do you have some particular reason for wanting to use the host only network in association with this program?