title: Virtual network interface in Mac OS X
body: <p>I know that you can make a virtual network interface in Windows (see <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236869" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>), and in Linux it is also pretty easy with ip-aliases, but does something similar exist for <strong>Mac OS X</strong>? I've been looking for loopback adapters, virtual interfaces and couldn't find a good solution.</p>
  <p>You can create a new interface in the networking panel, based on an existing interface, but it will not act as a real fully functional interface (if the original interface is inactive, then the derived one is also inactive).</p>
  <p>This scenario is needed when working in a completely disconnected situation. Even then, it makes sense to have networking capabilities when running servers in a VMWare installation. Those virtual machines can be reached by their IP address, but not by their DNS name, even if I run a DNS server in one of those virtual machines. By configuring an interface to use the virtual DNS server, I thought I could test some DNS scenario's. Unfortunately, no interface is resolving DNS names if none of them are inactive...</p>