yet another noob virtualization question

[amd_ftw]

hello friendly virtualization experts!

i work in a hospital. i run a personal laptop during my shift connected via ethernet cable onto a secured network. we have public wifi available for patients and their family.

what i want to do is run a vm guest that will can access the public wifi for personal email, browsing, and not be bridged to the host's machine's ethernet connection - 2 separate connections. 1 for host, 1 for guest.

i've fiddled with virtualization at home long ago, but never had a real need for it.

i'm confused to the all the virtualization offerings from vmware and sun.

my processor supports virtualization. can i use the internal wifi adapter, i also have an external usb wifi adapter, and they're both linux compatible.

i know i have the right hardware, i just don't understand the software and the tweaks.

thanks very much for all your replies!

 

[Shockey]

I think the best way and simplest way would be the external usb wifi adapter. You just have to assign it to the Virtual machine

vmware workstation supports what you will need.

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws4/doc/devices_usb_ws.html

So does virtual box from sun(sabregen corrected me)

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox

 

[sabregen]

virtual box is a Sun product, not an MS one. MS's offering for desktop is VirtualPC. Shockey is right though, you're looking for platforms that support USB device pass - through. Basically, you map the hardware device to the virtual machine, excluding the host system from accessing the device while the VM is running.