How can a Win10 guest get internet via Linux host broadband ?

[JowivK]

Hi,
I have Virtual Box latest version running on my Linux Mint Desktop. Unfortuantely, I have no fixed line data access at the moment. I have USB stick mobile broadband connection instead, which works fine for the host.
But I have no idea how I can get it to work for the Win10 guest. NAT or bridged mode both do not work with the default virtual modem. Or should I forget about that and activate the USB stick directly in the Win10 machine and install it there? It is not recognized by default, so I would have to find the drivers somewhere?
Or is there a way to get the guest to use the networking infrastructure of the host?
Any help much appreciated! Thanks!

[birdie]

As long as ping 8.8.8.8/telnet google.com 80 work on your host, your guest Internet connection should work just fine. If it doesn't, you've set up something improperly.

A NAT connection should work just fine for a guest.

Make sure "Cable is connected" checkbox is on.

[scottgus1]

If the USB adapter appears to the host OS as a network adapter, then Virtualbox's networking should be able to use it. Does your host PC think it's connected to a network when the USB device is working? Or does the host OS think it's talking to a modem?

Get the USB adapter running and confirm that your host OS has internet.

Then select one Linux or Windows guest and set its network to NAT (not NAT network).

Boot the guest. See if you can ping 8.8.8.8 in the guest. If you can, the guest has internet, even if a guest browser does not work.

If your guest cannot ping 8.8.8.8, please do these things:

1. On the host OS, post the text output of 'ifconfig' here on the forum, inside

Code: Select all

 tags.

2. On the guest OS, post the text output of 'ifconfig' if it's a Linux guest, 'ipconfig /all' if it's Windows. Post the command output here on the forum, inside [code] tags.

[socratis]

USB stick mobile broadband connection ... bridged mode

One small caveat... In order to use Bridged mode, VirtualBox installs a filter driver for each and every active network connection.

If when you installed VirtualBox your USB stick was not plugged in, then there is no way that VirtualBox could have installed that filter, because the USB stick was not active. The telltale sign is that the USB stick will not be available in the "Attached to" drop-down when selecting the Bridged mode.

In order to have the USB stick show up as an option, you need to reinstall VirtualBox while the USB stick is plugged-in to the host.