How to make a Virtual Machine present itself to my home network as if it were another physical computer

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49

Hmm interesting. I’ll try your test after a couple of days just to see if current config is stable. I wonder if one might manage something by connection teaming? Many thanks and kind regards, Mouse.

50

It’s a bit problematic to have two identical subnets on two interfaces, linux decides to use homeplug based on metric, but what decides the router? May be asymmetric causing downloads going over Wifi??? tcpdump or wireshark can show.

No experience with team here. Quick view in nm-connection editor shows that wifi is not offered during teaming, but is offered for a bond. Additionally, team seems to be deprecated in RHEL9 in favor of bond.

A bond can be created using a Wifi adapter, and this bond can be added to a bridge. But at first glance, the Wifi limitations are still existing, so the bond driver should decide to take the ethernet route if another MAC address is involved.
Lacking physical cable, I can’t test it here.
No idea how a router on the other side handles a bond.

51

Thanks very much for your thoughts I am very out of my depth here, but I think:

  1. The teaming or bonding either streams data in // or fails-over between the two connections
  2. I’m no sure how // transmission works but I don’t think the router minds. My guess is that each connection/stream leg instance has to go over one of the connections, so the // streaming is not atomic. The teaming/bonding device sorts that out. The router just manages different connection leg/stream instance and sends it where it needs to go.
  3. My router is able to team and load balance two WAN connections, one of which is wireless (mobile phone technology), and is wired (well fibre)
  4. But of course this may not be possIble in linux networking about which I know very little.

There’s some tech detail about it in this reference, including application to virtual machines. But it’s a bit Windows specific. NIC Teaming.

The ref deals specifically with wireless bonding in Arch Linux.Wireless bonding.

I wonder if it might be best to start another topic on this?

52

Thanks for the link to Wireless bonding. I tried this using two wlan-usb’s, but connected to the same access point or one the guest SSID of it.
I did not make it to the state that I can pull the active one having the other one take over. But it’s the first time I look into this stuff so thourough study of this arch article would be needed. Nevertheless, I’m afraid you end up with one network interface for homeplug+wifi, but the principal limitations of 3-address wifi will still keep the requirements for a ipvtap with all manual config for a VM.

53

I’m not sure why, as the VM connection would then be to the bond/team? But I guess you are right as I simply don’t know enough about any of this including how these things are implemented. But thanks very much indeed for having a go! Kind regards. Mouse.

54

I do not know either. You can have a bond of homeplug and wifi. This bond interface can be connected to a bridge, and the VM can be connected to the bridge.
Without further provisions, if you want to make a connecion from router to VM, you go to MAC router to MAC VM, but the 3-address Wifi only knows
MAC source → MAC router → MAC wifi=bond. No space for the VM.

But you have a rather advanced router, is there somewhere an option to switch the Wifi to 4-address mode? This assuming all connected devices will adapt to it??? Then you can bridge the wifi.

ip link add bridge1 type bridge
ip link set bridge1 up
ip link set wlp0s19f2u4 master bridge1
Error: Device does not allow enslaving to a bridge.
iw dev wlp0s19f2u4 set 4addr on
ip link set wlp0s19f2u4 master bridge1

####communication to router lost

iw dev wlp0s19f2u4 set 4addr off
command failed: Device or resource busy (-16)
ip link set wlp0s19s2u4 nomaster   #remove from bridge
iw dev wlp0s19f2u4 set 4addr off

#communicaion to router restored
55

Why does this have to be sooo complicated? I tried to setup bridge mode network for my VM in virt-manager and failed miserably.

In VirtualBox on the other hand, a bridged network interface is one click away in the GUI and it has never failed.

So, when using KVM/QEMU, why do we have to mess around with the host network configuration in CLI, hacking commands only pros understand. How does VB implement this and why is this not easily available in Virt-Manager?

56

Then steps I use are:

  1. Add a bridge to your systems network setup
  2. Select the bridge in the virtmanager’s NIC config

There are lots of guides to give you the steps to add the bridge to your systems. Given the guides you do not have to be an pro to configure this.

57

If you use wired networking, there is no need to CLI network configuration. Add a bridge with nm-connection-editor, making the original ethernet interface member of the bridge. Just refer to this bridge from virt-manager and you’re ready.
Problems arise with Wifi networks, due to the nature of the Wifi communication. Virtualbox solves this with a custom driver, to be built with each kernel update. Despite the ubiquitous use of wifi using laptops, there is as far I know not yet a simple method available. There is the ipvtap virtual network adapter available, but that’s indeed complicated CLI setup.

58

error: failed to get domain ‘win11-activated’

59

Start a new toipic please for a new question. This topic is old and solved.

60

closing