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I've installed vbox on an XP pro host and have installed an Ubuntu 8 guest. If the network is configured in NAT mode, all is well when traffic is initiated from in the guest OS. However, because of the way NAT works, I cannot provide any services on the guest OS that require it to be visible to the outside world (well, I could use port forwarding, but I don't want to do that).

So I decided to use the Host Interface feature. I followed the instructions in the user guide to the letter, but unfortunately, as soon as I enable the XP bridge from the physical NIC to my vbox TAP adapter, my network port drops.

After talking to our network support engineer, I found out that it is because when the XP bridge is created, it begins broadcasting BPDU packets (Bridging Protocol Data Unit). This is a signal to the spanning tree configuration in our corporate LAN that "something bad" may be happening on the port (e.g., unauthorized connection of a network switch) and it will automatically disable the port.

So the question is, how can I disable the BPDU broadcasts from the XP bridge? Or is there a way that vbox can do this?

Thanks,
Bill

P.S. My network engineer also told me that he runs VMWare workstation and it does not have this problem.

hi,

i had the same problem. after searching i found this document

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/51 ... 69815.html

you should set the in your registry (search for it in the document) and now the local bridge works (for me at least

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