I'm sorry about that. I didn't see the part about you using Windows 2000. Windows 2000 does not support any type of network bridging. That leaves you with two choices.

Use NAT between the Linux OS and the Windows 2000 OS. This is likely to require a complicated IP routing setup so it's probably not a good choice.

Use USB pass through in VirtualBox and connect a USB wireless adapter as a Linux USB device in the virtual machine. This is only a choice if you have a USB network adapter. In that case Windows 2000 will not be able to use the wireless adapter. You may even have to disable the wireless adapter in the Windows 2000 Connections folder or the Windows Device Manager. You set this up in the USB section of the virtual machine settings and NOT the network settings for the virtual machine. Install the correct Linux driver for the (rtl1817L) USB adapter. The wireless adapter should appear as a "wlan0" device in Linux.

Get Linux to communicate directly with the wireless adapter before you try to make Windows 2000 communicate. You may need software such as "wpa-supplicant" in order to establish an encrypted wireless connection. If there is no Linux driver for your USB network adapter you might be able to use "ndiswrapper" with the Windows driver (in Linux). That's what I did on my Linux laptop.

To allow Windows 2000 to communicate with Linux over Ethernet you will have to add a "Host Interface" or "NAT" interface to the virtual machine. Either of those will appear as an "eth0" device since your wireless adapter will be "wlan0". If you don't care about Windows 2000 communicating with Linux you can leave the virtual machine with no virtual network adapters. You don't need a virtual network adapter in order to use VirtualBox folder sharing.

If you set the "Virtual Box Host Interface 1" in the Windows 2000 Connections folder correctly then Windows 2000 can communicate (indirectly) to the wireless network adapter through Linux. In essence the Linux OS becomes the gateway/router for the Windows 2000 OS.

In Windows 2000 set the IP address of "Virtual Box Host Interface 1" to use the same network as the "eth0" device does in Linux but a different host address. In Windows 2000 set the default gateway of "Virtual Box Host Interface 1" to the exact same IP address as "eth0" has in Linux. Both of those settings are done using the "Virtual Box Host Interface 1" icon in the Windows 2000 Connections folder. Right click on the "icon" and click "Properties". Then double click on "TCP/IP" in the list of protocols.

Make sure that you have Linux configured to forward IP datagrams from the virtual Ethernet adapter "eth0" to the wireless adapter "wlan0". I believe that Linux will take care of that automatically. Check the Linux IP routing table if it doesn't work. IP routing is done based on IP destination addresses and the routing table.

Things that access the Internet typically have to use the default gateway route since you can't predict what the destination address will be ahead of time. When both Windows 2000 and Linux have the correct default gateway (for their next hop) then Windows 2000 will communicate to the Internet. Windows 2000 and Linux SHOULD NOT have the same default gateway address. Windows 2000 will have the Linux OS "eth0" IP as its default gateway and Linux will have the wireless router as its default gateway.

What you are trying to do is a bit complicated because you are using Windows 2000 and an old version of VirtualBox. It is easier to do with Windows XP and newer versions of VirtualBox.

First off I need apolagize to you. I clicked on firefox and it went to my homepage. You had allready got me online but I did not know it. I kept looking for a wireless connection and the wired connection was it. I am really sorry but it shows what an idiot I am dealing with linux and how frustrated I am at this whole thing. Is there any way to make this window bigger. I will try to attach a screen capture to show you what I am talking about. Sorry can not find out how get a file from windows. be back in a minuete.

here is the screen capture.

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It's no problem. I got quite frustrated myself the first time I started using Linux and the first time I used a virtual machine program. The two together are almost guaranteed to cause frustration and confusion.

If you installed the Guest Additions then you can set the virtual machine window options for automatic resizing of the display. Click "Machine" in virtual machine window menu and then and enable the "Auto-resize Guest Display" option. For that to work you also need to make sure that your Linux "/etc/xorg.conf" has no screen resolutions defined BEFORE you install the Guest Additions.

This is all you need in "/etc/xorg.conf":
In particular if you see these kind of lines in "xorg.conf" you have to comment them out with a # character on each line or delete them.

Display size settings that must be removed from "xorg.conf":
If you make changes to "xorg.conf" then re-install the Guest Additions. Otherwise automatic display resizing won't work.

Drag the virtual machine window larger or smaller and the Linux X-Windows display resolution should change automatically to fill the space.

If you always want exactly the same size display (in pixels) then put in the "Modes" options with the display resolutions. The maximum resolution listed is the default. In my example "Modes" the display would be "1024x768". Add the "Display" subsection in the section called "Screen".

Example of fixed display resolution:
I had a lot of trouble getting automatic resizing to work with a Linux guest OS but I did eventually get it working. Ubuntu was easier to get working than other kinds of Linux because it didn't have the fixed screen resolutions in the default "xorg.conf". Hopefully you won't have to even mess with "xorg.conf".

Thanks now I got to find dhcp3-sever and download it. whats the best proxy server squid?

This did not work It says no driver vboxvidio. What to try next.
Here is what my xorg looks like now.

But on to the next task. dhcp3. Even though I have set windows dhcp servers up I never had much luck with the linux version.

The adaptor I bind it to I 192.168.0.1 Simply because thats easy. Then it will assign 192.168.02. Then for nat I assign 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.128 What I would like To do though Is make everything seem like subnets. But the problem is I have never really understood it from the beginning. but here is what I am looking at. The origanal gateway is 192.168.1.1 It assigns me 192.168.104. That I do not have any control over. But is there some way to make the dhcp assign addresses that are just subnetts of the 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 Then make my nat function ether assign addresses in that subnet or in turn subnet it again.

You will need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in order to get the "vboxvideo" device driver. That should also configure your "xorg.conf" file automatically. If you did install the Guest Additions then the "vboxvideo" driver did not install. I've used the Guest Additions with Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop and the automatic display resizing works.

If you're going to use a DHCP server in Linux running in a virtual machine then I don't think you can't use NAT between the virtual machine and the host LAN. To support a DHCP server on Linux I think that you will need to use the USB pass-through and use a USB Ethernet adapter. That's a lmitation of Windows 2000. Since Windows 2000 does not support network bridging there is no way to get a virtual Ethernet port directly on the host LAN. The virtual machine has to talk directly to an Ethernet device on the host LAN and that is only supported by USB pass-through.

Your broadband router may have an option to assign "static" DHCP leases. In that case you can add the Ethernet MAC address of your Windows 2000 system and the IP address to be assigned. You can also set the range of addresses that the router uses for DHCP. How you do that on each router model is different.

Linux DHCP servers support "reserved" addresses that perform the same funcion and assign a specific IP address only to a specific client with a designated MAC address. You can use "man dhcpd.conf" or look at the documentation for your Linux DHCP server to find out the correct format for reserved addresses.

You may find it easier to use the 192.168 address range like this.

192.168.sss.hhh

Use "sss" for the sub-net number and "hhh" for the host number in the sub-net.

The network masks on computers do not have to be the same. The network mask is only used to make routing decisions. The routing table also uses the most exact match that it can find because it's sorted in that order.

network 192.168.3.0 mask 255.255.255.0 gateway 192.168.3.4 if eth1
network 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 gateway 192.168.1.1 if eth0

If you put the above two routes into the routing table, all messages to 192.168.nnn.nnn except for network 192.168.3.nnn will go to the gateway on eth0. The messages for 192.168.3.nnn will go to the gateway on eth1.

Some other computer may use totally different masks for the network addresses depending on what routing decisions it needs to make. The masks for network interfaces are automatically used to create some routing table entries, so setting the masks for the network interfaces correctly takes care of most situations.

DHCP and routing are separate and a DHCP server can (but should not) assign IP addresses that are incompatible with the routing configuration.

For small networks I usually prefer to assign addresses manually, since computers can still communicate with the correct address if the DHCP server fails. I use DHCP for computers that aren't a permanent part of my network. With the "reserved" DHCP addresses you can do the same thing on the DHCP server or router. The terminology varies, so it may be called "static DHCP".

DHCP on a client broadcasts messages from UDP port 0.0.0.0:68 to UDP port 255.255.255.255:67. Those broadcasts are usually not forwarded between sub-networks and don't cross through NAT. The DHCP server replies using a UDP message from its address rrr.rrr.rrr.rrr:67 to broadcast address 255.255.255.255:68 so that the client can receive the offer of an address. The "rrr" numbers are the address of the router running the DHCP server.

DHCP has provisions to work across sub-networks but you have to configure the routing between sub-networks to pass through the required messages. When DHCP responds to a client on a different sub-network it uses a network directed broadcast. EX: 192.168.2.255. If the intervening routers do not permit directed broadcasts then DHCP won't work. You may be able to configure some of the VirtualBox NAT using "vboxmanage" but I will be surprised if you can get DHCP to work through VirtualBox NAT. You might want to search the VirtualBox forums for "DHCP" and "NAT" to see if anyone else has tried that and posted information.

You might find this Windows 2000 bridging driver useful. With it, you should be able to define a virtual network interface as a "Host Interface" and then bridge the VirtualBox Host Interface on Windows 2000 to the Ethernet LAN connection on Windows 2000. That will allow Linux to have a MAC address and IP address directly on the LAN. Un-check all the protocols for the VirtualBox Host Interface on Windows 2000 to avoid the Windows 2000 system appearing on the IP network twice.

Ethernet Bridge 2.0

You have to create a startup shortcut or script to run the program with the correct information and create the bridge on a reboot. For testing you can use the GUI to create the bridge manually.

REAL-ETHERNET<+++>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-INTERFACE<===>LINUX-eth0<---DHCP-SERVER

The "+++" above indicates the network bridge established by the bridging driver.

Without the bridge you can only access the real Ethernet like this.

REAL-ETHERNET<===>VIRTUALBOX-NAT<===>LINUX-eth0

or

REAL-ETHERNET<===>IP-ROUTING<===>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-INTERFACE<===>LINUX-eth0

Without the network bridge you may be able to configure Windows 2000 IP Routing and Remote Access Service to forward the correct IP datagrams between the REAL-ETHERNET and VIRTUALBOX-HOST-INTERFACE. I suspect that will be a lot more complicated than using the bridging driver and I'm not even sure it will work.

What I suggest is that you try to use the bridging driver. Configure a bridge manually with the GUI after each reboot. If your testing proves that it works then create a shortcut in the "Startup" folder or in the "Run" key of the registry. The web page for the bridging driver explains how to do that.

If the bridging driver doesn't do what you need then look at Routing and Remote Access for Windows 2000. To use RRAS you have to make manual registry changes to enable forwarding of IP datagrams on Windows 2000. You also have to make routing table entries for RRAS to work with DHCP.

Ok I loaded the ethernet bridge. Here is what happens I see the usb wireless as a wireles but cannot get it connected. Maybe If I can figure out how to delete the original virtaul connection the wireless will work?

Where does the USB wireless appear as a wireless adapter? Does it appear in Windows 2000 or Linux?

If you want the wireless and wired LAN ports to be separate in Linux then create two virtual Ethernet ports, or one USB pass through (for wireless) and one virtual Ethernet port (for the LAN). To provide a DHCP server on the LAN the virtual ethernet has to be a VIRTUALBOX-HOST interface that is bridged to the LAN connection in Windows 2000.

You can create two separate bridges like this if you want.

WIRELESS<+++>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-1<===>eth0

LAN<***>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-2<===>eth1

The "+++" and "***" are two separate bridges. That will make the wireless appear to be a normal Ethernet port on Linux that is separate from the LAN port in Linux.

If you don't care about providing DHCP on the wireless you can still use NAT. This is probably the simplest setup since you don't care if your wireless supports promiscuous mode.

WIRELESS<===>VIRTUALBOX-NAT<===>eth0

LAN<***>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-1<=====>eth1

You can make the wireless, wired and Linux all appear to be one LAN by bridging like this.

WIRELESS<+++>
LAN<+++>
<+++>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-1<===>eth0

The "+++" bridge in Windows 2000 consists of all three ports. Some wireless adapters do not work well in promiscuous mode. To use bridging you have to set the wireless port to promiscuous mode so that it will receive messages for all three MAC addresses.

With USB pass-through you make the wireless adapter appear to be "wlan0" in Linux. In that case you can do the bridging in Linux if you want.

WIRELESS<--usb------------->wlan0<+++>
LAN<***>VIRTUALBOX-HOST-1<==>eth0<+++>

The "***" is a bridge in Windows 2000 and the "+++" is a bridge in Linux. Use "brctl" in Linux to set up bridges. You have to add the "brctl" commands to one of your startup scripts. To do IP routing between wlan0 and eth0 you don't use a bridge in Linux.

I guess I was wrong. I got a different screen with more options Since one was wireless I thought That meant it was seeing my wireless but I think I was wrong. Even though the bridge 2.0 lets me add my two adaptors I see nothing in windows or linux that says anything about bridged cards. I do not think it is working.

Heres a screenshot.

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Linux won't see anything different when you use bridging versus NAT. What should change is that Linux will get a 10.2.0.nnn address from the DHCP server in NAT. If you use bridging you should see that Linux gets an address directly from your broadband router, such as 192.168.1.50.

It may be a little harder to tell if you bridged the wired LAN port unless you temporarily connect it to a router with a DHCP server.

Windows 2000 also will not show you any different status for the network connections with bridging. It doesn't know that the bridging driver is even there.

You can use the normal commands like "ping" and "arp" to tell if bridging is working. It should appear as if the Linux Ethernet devices are directly connected to the wired LAN or Wireless when the VirtualBox Host Interface is bridged.

I am beginning to think that having a router on both sides of my internet server is confusing things. It has been a while since I built a crossover cable but tomorrow I am going to do that. Then I am going to either throw ip cop on a comp or load another flavor of linux and use that to troubleshoot this connection. If I use ipcop I need to throw on a graphic interface for it or at least the programs running on it but any brand of linux should have the tools available to do this. Since you are helping me what brand of linux do you prefer to build a router/diagnostic comp out of.
That is what I am trying to do.

[/quote]

Then it is not bridged. I tried bridging with xp and xp will not bridge. Xp sees my wireless as an ics connection and tells me it can not bridge to a ics connetion.

In order to bridge connections in Windows XP you have to make sure that you disable Internet Connection Sharing. That's on the last tab in the properties for the connection. You disable Internet Connection Sharing on the connection going to the Internet and not the connection going to your other client computers that communicate through the ICS computer.

When you bridge connections without Internet Connection Sharing there must be a router to take care of DHCP and NAT.

Wireless presents another possible problem with bridging since some adapters don't support promiscuous mode. Look in post #5 for this thread and there is a link to an article that explains how to work around problems with wireless bridging.

If you want multiple client LANs to use Internet connection sharing through a computer, then you must bridge the client LAN connections BEFORE enabling Internet Connection Sharing (or temporarily disable ICS). Internet connection sharing will provide DHCP/NAT to the Network Bridge if there are no other available un-bridged connections. If there are other connections then you can select the Network Bridge or one of the other connections to share the Internet.

I also suggest that you reboot Windows XP after creating a network bridge, and also after enabling Internet Connection Sharing. When I haven't done that I've noticed that the network properties tends to hang when changing other settings later.