Re: Why wireless interface cannot be attached to a Linux host bridge?

Ken D'Ambrosio
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 16:29:57 -0000

On 2020-07-07 11:26, ryotaro kobayashi wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> I'm from japan and using machine translation, so I apologize if
it's hard to read.
>
> I am currently trying to build a virtual environment using Ubuntu and kvm.
>
> However, I found out from the following page that the virtual machine
cannot use the bridge network because I am using a wireless network.
>
> https://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Networking
>
> I am having trouble with this because my PC is using a wireless LAN.
>
> On that page it says "wireless interfaces cannot be attached to a
Linux host bridge",  I Can you tell me why this is so?
>
> Is it a limitation of the NIC driver for the wireless LAN?
> Or is it a limitation of libvirt?

Hi!  While I no longer recall the details myself, it has to do with WiFi
packets being slightly different than stock Ethernet packets, and WiFi
simply can't support bridging.  While there are, if memory serves, some
interfaces that allow you to work around this, it's really a protocol
issue and neither libvirt or a driver's fault.  Perhaps someone else
either remembers more details, or is willing to come back with something
m,ore specific, but I thought I'd reply so you at least had something.

-Ken

P.S.  The machine translation worked very, very well.