How to setup VPC guest-to-host networking on a ibook G4

The environment:

• ibook G4, 12", 800MHz, 640MB RAM, AirPort Extreme
• Tiger 10.4.6
• VPC 7.0.2
• Guest: Windows XP-Pro

Goal: setup guest-to-host and host-to-guest networking with VPC on the ibook which connects to the LAN via Wifi only. The issues:

• Virtual-switching in VPC 6 is broken in Tiger. The fix is available only in VPC 7.0.2 and later.
• Guest-to-host and host-to-guest networking is not working with virtual-switching on the Airport.
• The built-in ethernet port is normally down not connected.

The solution: use virtual-switching on the ethernet port which is to be brought up manually. Steps:

1. In OSX, assign an IP address to the built-in ethernet interface, select a media and bringup the interface.

> sudo ifconfig en0 192.145.1.1
> sudo ifconfig en0 media 100baseTX
> sudo ifconfig en0 mediaopt hw-loopback

2. In VPC, use virtual-switching on the built-in ethernet interface.
3. In WinXP, assign an IP address (109.145.1.2) on the same subnet, use 192.145.1.1 as the default gateway.

Turning on the Remote Desktop on the WinXP, I am able to use Remote Desktop Client (RDC) from Microsoft to access the guest WinXP from the host OSX. The performance is pretty good (when setting the connection type to LAN in RDC), though not as good as that in the VPC whole screen mode. The performance becomes worse when I set the connection type to dial-up in RDC.