####> This option file is used in: ####> podman machine init, machine set ####> If file is edited, make sure the changes ####> are applicable to all of those. #### **--user-mode-networking** Indicates that this machine relays traffic from the guest through a user-space process running on the host. In some VPN configurations the VPN may drop traffic from alternate network interfaces, including VM network devices. By enabling user-mode networking (a setting of `true`), VPNs observe all podman machine traffic as coming from the host, bypassing the problem. When the qemu backend is used (Linux, Mac), user-mode networking is mandatory and the only allowed value is `true`. In contrast, The Windows/WSL backend defaults to `false`, and follows the standard WSL network setup. Changing this setting to `true` on Windows/WSL informs Podman to replace the WSL networking setup on start of this machine instance with a user-mode networking distribution. Since WSL shares the same kernel across distributions, all other running distributions reuses this network. Likewise, when the last machine instance with a `true` setting stops, the original networking setup is restored.