I use Virtualbox for all of my virtual machining needs.  For some of my guest vms I like to use “host” networking, meaning that essentially the vm will share the hosts network adapter using a bridge and a TAP interface on the host computer to perform its virtual networking magic.  However, it can be a little more tricky to setup than using Virtualbox’s other type of networking, NAT.

However, with two packages “bridge-utils” and “uml-utilities” the chore of setting up a bridge interface on Ubuntu (and maybe even Debian) is almost pain free. Read more