Connection to TAP Interfaces not available anymore in Host mode

[Jerome Poulin]

After switching to 2.1.0, using Host interface does not show TAP interfaces in the interface selection list and Host networking is not stable enough yet.

It would be appreciable to have the choise between Host interface and Tap interface instead for those who prefer using the kernel for interface configuration or do routing instead of bridging.

[Aleksey Ilyushin]

Jerome,

TAP interfaces were probably missing in GUI selection since they usually had no IP address configured. It is the same problem as in #2780. There was another issue (improper adjustment of MAC header pointer) that was fixed as well.

You can try the patched version attached to #3056 (instructions included). It won't show TAP devices in GUI selection box, but you can get around the problem with

VBoxManage modifyvm <your_vm_name> -hostifdev<adapter_num> <tap_device_name>

No plans to support both 2.0.6 and 2.1 styles of attaching to TAP devices, sorry.

[Aleksey Ilyushin]

The fix is included into 2.1.2. Please re-open the ticket against 2.1.2 if the problem persists.

[Ivo Smits]

I would like to support Jerome's request to re-introduce the 2.0.6 style of attaching to a TAP device.

I suppose the 'official' way of attaching to a tap interface may provide better performance (for guest-host communication at least). I would also like to have some more control over the network interfaces (limit access to tap devices by creating persistent interfaces, firewalling, kernel bridging).

I suppose it won't be too much trouble to re-introduce the 'old style' because most of the code for virtualbox exists already. The interface type should probably be renamed to prevent conflicts with the new host only networking.

Personally, I do not need this to be available from the GUI.

[Frank Mehnert]

You can still attach to a TAP device in bridged mode. Just don't connect to eth0 or wlan0 but connect to the TAP device.

[Ivo Smits]

frank, I have done as you suggested. Although the new feature works pretty well and is definately very useful for many users who require just a simple and quick network setup, it does not work in all cases.

The virtualbox kernel network filter seems to strip off any IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tag. It also does not seem to handle multiple mac addresses on the guest side very well (as the result of software ethernet bridging).

I would really like to see the possibility to connect directly to a tap interface (as it should be, using /dev/net/tun) back. Not to replace the very nice new bridged networking feature, but as an addition. I don't think a lot of code is required to accomplish this, as tap interfaces are generally very easy to use.

If you like, I will create another ticket dedicated to the problems with the current host networking implementation.