As you are aware, in the development of SharePoint solutions you can of course use the main OS to install your products, development tools, etc., or you can use a Virtual Machine. Whenever possible I choose to use a Virtual OS for many reasons. Along with that decision I tend to use Microsoft Virtual PC due to its fabulous price. That said, this article is not a suggestion of how to tune your Virtual OSs. Take a look around the internet and you will find a significant amount of web articles devoted to that topic. This article focuses specifically on issues of connectivity. I choose this sliver of a topic because of the immense impact it can have on your development speed.