Question : Internal communication of VirtualPC 2007

Hi All

Just a quick question regarding the Shared Networking (NAT) of VirtualPC 2007. Does this mode support internal communication between virtual machines? in the same way that the Local Only mode does? I want to build such an Internet enabled private subnet for testing a network management package.

According to the VirtualPC 2007 Help, "Shared networking also does not support networking between virtual machines or from the host operating system to the virtual machine." So, the answer seems to be NO.

But I do notice that if you PING each other VMs you can actually see their MAC addresses from ARP -A command, that means they are actually in the same broadcast domain, though you cannot PING through each other.

Of course, all VMs can see the same gateway at 192.168.131.254, which is also their DHCP server.

Any comments?

Thanks,
P

Answer : Internal communication of VirtualPC 2007

The ARP command and the PING command address different layers in the OSI model.  So being able to ARP the MAC address would show connectivity at a pure physical layer, but the ability to pass to the upper layer for the PING may not be possible.  And given the information you dug up, I would say that is the case for Shared Networking of VirtualPC 2007.