Liam Westley

UPDATE - 28 January 2009

With VirtualBox version 2.1.0 and higher you DO NOT need to bridge network connections, and you will not find the icon of a little network card with the + on it.  In fact, the networking works a lot more like Virtual PC which makes life much easier.

You can either configure the network to use NAT (which is how I first installed Windows 7 beta on Vista x64), or in the virtual machine Settings->Network select Adapter 1, change the Attached To drop down to Host Interface, and then in the list of Host Interfaces you select the local network connection for which the guest should have access.  When you run the guest it can then do things like request it's own IP address via DHCP. 

I actually tested this (VirtualBox v2.1.0) by connecting Adapter 1 to my LAN connection and Adapter 2 to my WiFi connection and it worked perfectly within Windows 7 beta.  The only glitch is that if you enter network settings again it doesn't highlight the currently selected host interface, however, on the main Settings screen you can clearly see the two guest network adapters and how they are connected to the host adapters.

STEP ONE

In Windows XP, go to Start Menu -> Control Panel -> Network Connections. You should see something like the image below.  The 'real' network connections on this system are Local Area Connection, a Gigabit network interface and Wireless Network Connection 2.

STEP TWO

You must have a least ONE virtual machine to be able to configure networking under VirtualBox, although the virtual network card created can be used across multiple virtual machines.

Create a new virtual machine in VirtualBox UI, use the Create New Virtual Machine wizard,

1.       Machine menu, select New. Click Next.

2.       Enter a Name for you virtual machine, leave O/S as Other/Unknown or the O/S you are about to install. Click Next.

3.       Set the memory allocation. Click Next.

4.       At the Virtual Hard Disk page, select an existing disk image (or create a New disk image). Click Next.

a.       For this example I clicked on the New button, selected a new Dynamically expanding partition, 2Gb in size and accepted the default file location

5.       Click Finish.

Now you have the new virtual machine, you set up the network as follows,

1.       Highlight the new virtual machine, click on the Settings toolbar icon to open the Settings dialog. 

2.       Select Network from the left hand menu.

3.       Configure Adapter 1

a.       Tick Enable network adapter

b.      Change the Attached to drop down list to the setting Host Interface

c.       In the section called Host Interfaces below the drop down lists, click on the Add New Host Interface icon (a network card with a + symbol)

d.      Leave the network name as the default name, VirtualBox Host Interface 1

e.      Click OK

f.        In Windows XP you may then see a warning dialog. If so, confirm the installation of the VirtualBox TAP Adapter by clicking Continue Anyway (this warning is due to the VirtualBox driver not being signed)

g.       You should now see Virtual Host Interface 1, appear in the Host Interfaces list. Select this new interface so it is highlighted.

h.      You can now click on the OK button in the Settings dialog to finish the network configuration

STEP THREE

Although it may appear you have only been configuring VirtualBox, but what we have just done is add a virtual network adapter to Windows XP. If we return to the Network Connections control panel applet, and we refresh the list, we now see a new item has appeared Virtual Host Interface 1,

We now need to link the new VirtualBox adapter to one of the real network connections on our system.  Click on Local Network Connection (Gigabit in our case) and then Ctrl+Click on Virtual host Interface 1  so that both are highlighted.  Right click on one of the highlighted cards, and select the option Bridge Connections,

Windows XP will configure a new bridge connection,

If we return to the Network Connections control panel applet, and we refresh the list, we now see a new item has appeared Network Bridge,

 The Network Bridge item lists the status as Network cable unplugged. This wil change to Connected when the virtual machine is started and the network interface driver within the virtual machine is installed.

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