[Qemu-discuss] Connecting two qemu VMs

[Dominik G.]

Is it possible to connect two qemu instances with each other via TCP
or socket and have both connected with the host network using only
user networking (SLIRP)?
Basically like
http://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Networking#User_Networking_.28SLIRP.29
but with a second qemu VM:

+-----------------+        +-----------------+
|  qemu Process 1 |        |  qemu Process 2 |
|  +---------+    |        |  +---------+    |
|  |         |    |        |  |         |    |
|  | Guest 1 |    |        |  | Guest 2 |    |
|  |         |    |        |  |         |    |
|  +----+----+    |        |  +----+----+    |
|       |         |        |       |         |
|       |         |        |       |         |
| =+====+===+========TCP/==========+         |
|  |        |     | Socket |                 |
|  |       DNS    |        +-----------------+
|  |              |
+--|--------------+
   |
Host network

I am able to do this with a third qemu VM which acts as a router for
the two VMs and I can get two qemu VMs to talk to each other but I
cannot get the one VM to use the built-in gateway and DNS of the
second one.

I know that there are ways other than SLIRP which can achieve this
but I want to be able to set this up without root access and I don't
care about performance since this setup is just for testing
purposes. Right now I'm just wondering if I can simplify my setup
leaving out the third router vm and just use the gateway/dns/routing
that qemu has already built in.