I'm setting up several VMs connected via bridging, which I've done before on other servers. But this time I'm having problems and I can't see all the traffic with wireshark.

VM1 <-> eth1 <-> VM2

eth1:
172.16.0.1
172.16.255.255

VM1:
172.16.0.2

VM2:
172.16.0.3


From the console, I can send a ping to 172.16.0.1 and 172.16.0.2 and it works, but I don't see the ICMP in wireshark. I only see the ARP requests.

From VM1, I can ping 172.16.0.2 and 172.16.0.1, but neither show up in Wireshark on the host. The ping gets a response, but I only see the ARP on both the host and the guest.

I'm having problems with VM2, but its pointless to troubleshoot if I can't even see traffic on eth1 on host or on the guest. It almost looks like the NIC is responding to the ping directly, rather than going through the kernel. What am I doing wrong?

I am unsure about this, but if you are pinging the machines from the host console it might not show up in wireshark because the traffic is not actually going through the NIC at any time because all the traffic is actually local. Another option is to make sure you don't have any filters on.