Does Wireshark receive packets from the network?

Wireshark on the Dosbox host shows packets from the Dosbox Win95 IP-address. But that is expected since network folder sharing between Dosbox and its host works flawlessly. Also a http- or ftp-server on the Dosbox host is accessible from within Dosbox.

Wireshark on another PC in the network doesn't show anything, regardless whether I only do communication between Dosbox and the Dosbox host, try to go to the internet or try to reach (ping) that PC directly or the router from within Dosbox. It really looks like all traffic from Dosbox is blocked by the Dosbox host. The firewall is off, of course. Just to completely eliminate it as a source of error.

I can only suspect that this might be some problem (or feature?) of Windows 7 with WinPcap. Or vice versa. But that is only a pretty wild guess.

Or I'm doing something incredibly stupid...

Does Wireshark on the host show packets from other computers on the network?

First I should mention that I'm on a WLAN. That might be important. Forgot that before.

Second thing that may be worth noting is that WLAN adapters aren't shown by their actual device names when realnic=list ist used. Instead the devices are listed as "Microsoft". Don't know if that has something to say. This was true for two machines I tried (Win7/32 ans Win7/64).

Now the answer to your question:

Wireshark on the host shows packets from other machines. Not everything, but stuff directed towards the host (like pinging the host) or traffic that is broadcasted throughout the network is visible in Wireshark. Without being an expert on this matter, I'd say this looks like something you'd expect exactly that way.

Networking in general works fine between all machines. Only the Dosbox guest Windows can't get outside its host. And isn't reachable from the outside.

In the meantime I even tried disabling WLAN encryption. Although that idea was purely born out of desparation and it didn't help either...

And btw: thanks for your time!

What subnets are you using?

The usual 255.255.255.0. And I checked the TCP/IP settings on the Dosbox-Win95 at least a dozen times...

Yes there have been more problem reports with WLAN.

As it looks, your interface doesn't get or forward data for other machines, which DOSBox practically is.

Last act: finally I tried what I should have tried long before and connected the Dosbox host with an old-fashioned cable to the router. That worked instantly.

Looks like I tried indeed something stupid...

Here's my assumption (beware: sounds definitely unprofessional and may even be completely wrong): unlike 'network cards' in virtual machines the Dosbox/WinPcap-solution simply acts as a 'tunnel' for the network card on the guest, a cable based NE2000 in this case. So in effect using a wireless card as interface card in Dosbox means trying to connect a cable based LAN card to a Wireless Network. Which obviously doesn't work since the NE2000 doesn't 'talk' WLAN.

Maybe hal-9000 has something more profound to say on this matter, but this sounds quite reasonable to me.

Thanks for listening... 😉

Solved. See solution here: Guide: Windows 95 / 98 inside Dosbox - Network over WLAN in Windows 7

I am not sure if you noticed, but our current stance on win95 is not supported and we are actually trying to keep posts about it from our forum. (e.g we close them).