Buying a wireless adapter for bridged use

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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chedderslam
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Joined: 23. Jul 2010, 01:08
Primary OS: MS Windows 7
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Buying a wireless adapter for bridged use

Post by chedderslam »

WIn 10 host, Win 7 32 ult guest.

The host has a wireless and ethernet adapter. I tried a powerline adapter for the guest but the wiring in the house has too much interference. I would like to use a bridged adapter to assign the guest it's own IP address and give it a dedicated network interface as it will be using the network heavily. I was looking at a USB draft N adapter on Amazon and was wondering if I could use that. Any problems with that route?

Using VB 5.0.2 as the 5.0.4 has a bug with unchecking everything but VB bridged for the network adapter.

Thank you.
socratis
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Re: Buying a wireless adapter for bridged use

Post by socratis »

chedderslam wrote:I would like to use a bridged adapter to assign the guest it's own IP address and give it a dedicated network interface as it will be using the network heavily.
Well, if you bridge your guest to your host's adapter, that's exactly what you'll get; a unique IP address that looks and feels like a dedicated network interface. There are some caveats with bridged and wireless...

Bridged and wireless don't always play nice. Bridged networking is outside the WLAN specification. It may or may not work. Some combinations of Routers/Access Points, WLAN cards and drivers work, some don't. See: Bridging & Wifi - Supported hardware. For example, it works fine in my home, but not in my office. Same laptop, same VM. Try to see if it works either with wired bridged or with NAT.

But, if you have both wired and wireless connected, I would bridge the wired connection and be done with it. No need for a third adapter.

Unless I'm missing something from your description...
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scottgus1
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Re: Buying a wireless adapter for bridged use

Post by scottgus1 »

You can use Virtualbox's USB filters to pipe the USB wifi adapter directly into your guest. Then only your guest will see the USB adapter and should have its own private wi-fi channel. You will need to install the wifi adapter's drivers in the guest if you use the Virtualbox USB filters, but you will not need to bridge. Practice using the USB filters with a USB thumb drive - it can be a bit tricky to get the process right.
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