Bridging in Windows XP does not work properly with Wireless adapters

[Robert Pendell]

Users of Windows XP are unable to create a proper bridge against a VirtualBox Host Interface when a wireless adapter is involved. Windows XP will show that the bridge was created successfully but connectivity is not present. This is due to lack of support for promiscuous mode in the majority of wireless adapters on the market.

A workaround has been identified that will resolve the issue but is not guaranteed to work for everyone.
​Bridge May Not Work With a Non-Promiscuous Mode Network Adapter

And documentation in the Technet that mentions how network bridging works in Windows XP
​Windows XP Bridging and Media Support for Home Networking

[Robert Pendell]

I'm going to add a few notes here concerning this workaround. It mostly is how mac addresses are seen to various devices.

The virtual machines will see the mac address of the miniport device on the host as the router. They will not see the router.

The router will see the mac address of the host and will not see the virtual machine at all.

This does not mean that the router is not assigning ip addresses though. Depending on your router model and firmware then it may only show one ip assignment per mac address (the usually the host machine) or it will show all of them. My Netgear will only show the host ip but still assigns to multiple machine with the same mac. My Linksys modified using the DD-WRT firmware will list all the ip addresses even if they are the same mac address. Even though this is occuring all the virtual machines as well as the host still have different mac addresses and therefore will not conflict.

[Robert Pendell]

This workaround does not work for the 2Wire Wireless Gateway modems. They will re-assign the same IP address back to the virtual machines and will result in an ip address conflict.

[Robert Pendell]

Technical correction:
Last sentence in the first reply says "...all the virtual machines as well as the host still have different mac addresses and therefore will not conflict."

This should actually say that "...all the virtual machines as well as the host still have different ip addresses and therefore will not conflict."

The mac addresses have to do with arp and are non-relevant here. The network bridge is doing arp proxying for this to work.

[Frank Mehnert]

Obsolete.