FreeDOS does not answer ARP

Question

I have 2 VirtualBox virtual machines with freeDOS (1.2) as guests, and I am trying to have network connection between them.

For a start I am trying to have connectivity between one of the machines and the host (Windows 10).

It seems that for some reason the guest does not answer ARP and ping requests, although it can send ARP request to the host and use the answer to ping the host.

In 'Network settings' of the VM, the adapter is set to "Host-only adapter".

Here the host is 192.168.56.1 and the guest is 192.168.56.2

Pinging the guest from the host does not work:

C:\Users\Rafi>ping 192.168.56.2

Pinging 192.168.56.2 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.56.1: Destination host unreachable.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 192.168.56.2:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 1, Lost = 3 (75% loss),

Pinging the guest from itself does not work:

C:\>ping 192.168.56.2
mTCP Ping by M Brutman ([e-mail]) (C)opyright 2009-2013
  Version: May 23 2013

Timeout waiting for ARP response

Pinging the host from the guest works:

C:\>ping 192.168.56.1
mTCP Ping by M Brutman ([e-mail]) (C)opyright 2009-2013
  Version: May 23 2013

ICMP Packet payload is 32 bytes.

Packet sequence number 0 received in 0.85 ms, ttl=128
Packet sequence number 1 received in 0.85 ms, ttl=128
Packet sequence number 2 received in 0.85 ms, ttl=128
Packet sequence number 3 received in 3.40 ms, ttl=128

Packets sent: 4, Replies received: 4, Replies lost: 0
Average time for a reply: 1.48 ms (not counting lost packets)

Configuration file of mTCP (in guest):

C:\>type %mtcpcfg%
DHCPVER DHCP Client version May 23 2013
TIMESTAMP ( 1546028611 ) Fri Dec 28 15:23:31 2018
PACKETINT 0x60 
IPADDR 192.168.56.2
NETMASK 255.255.255.0
GATEWAY 192.168.56.1
MTU 1500

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

FreeDOS does not have a resident TCP/IP stack, and when I tried to ping the guest, there was no program that would handle the ARP and pings.

When the guest runs a program which has the ability to handle TCP/IP, it does answer ARPs and pings.