Allowing Host->Guest networking when untethered

[Terry Ellison]

We've now had perhaps a dozen posts on the forum discussing a use-case that is not covered in the current networking models. It is a very valid one and one that I think that we should consider how we meet.

This is the scenario where the user wants to be able to have guest to host IP traffic when the host itself is untethered from any network. A good example here is some who is working on a laptop and wants to use a VM LAMP appliance as a server to demonstrate client functionality on the laptop. Host IF works fine for this as long as the host has a connected NIC that the guests host IF can connect to. NAT connection through the localhost loopback connector does work as long as the client application supports port remapping, however this is problematic for many if not most applications. The host cannot participate in an "internal network", since this only supports inter-guest communication. Perhaps the ideal solution would be have the option to expose an Internal Network to the host in much the same way as the old host IF facilitated, but really any properly documented solution will do.

I am not sure whether to classify this as major or minor, since this is functionality that VMware does support in its network adapter and this is therefore an unfavourable product differentiator for VirtualBox.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

That's already work in progress.

[Terry Ellison]

Thanks Sander, I hoped it might be and it's good to know this, but having the ticket makes an easy xref for future such posts.

[drrk]

Is there any expected timescale on this, is is something that I could really do with, as at the moment I have to bodge around it.

[Frank Mehnert]

Since 2.2.0 we support host-only network interfaces which should be used for this purpose. The host end is always visible and always has an IP assigned, even if the host is not connected to the internet. Of course you should use the latest release, 2.2.4.