Port Conflict Between Multiple WSL2 Systems in Bridged Networking Mode

[try-agaaain]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have installed two WSL2 systems: Ubuntu-22.04 and Ubuntu-24.04. I want to configure independent networking for both systems, so I switched to a bridged networking mode with the .wslconfig file:

[wsl2]
networkingMode=bridged # Bridged mode
vmSwitch=my-wsl-switch # Name of the virtual switch created in Hyper-V
ipv6=true # Enable IPv6

The my-wsl-switch is a virtual switch I created in Hyper-V, and it works correctly.

I assigned static IP addresses to the two WSL2 systems using netplan (e.g., 192.168.123.100 and 192.168.123.101).

However, when I start the SSH service on both systems, only one system's SSH service can run successfully. If I try to start the SSH service on the other system, it fails with the following error:

$ sudo systemctl start ssh
Job for ssh.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status ssh.service" and "journalctl -xeu ssh.service" for details.

I suspect that even in bridged mode, the two WSL2 systems might be sharing the same IP stack or network resources, causing a conflict where only one system can use port 22 at a time.

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like each WSL2 system to have truly independent IP addresses and networking, such that services like SSH running on standard port 22 can coexist without conflicts.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I considered using Docker to create separate containers for each environment, but Docker is too cumbersome for me. I prefer working with WSL due to the simplicity of the file system and ease of access compared to Docker. Therefore, I am looking for a way to achieve network isolation for each WSL2 system without switching to Docker.

Additional context
The Windows version I use is Windows 11 23H2.

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View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Open similar issues:

• Multiple network interfaces, one of them bridged (#9113), similarity score: 0.74
• WSL - vSwitch - Internal/Private - Static WSL IP/Subnet (#9251), similarity score: 0.71
• Feature req: Separate network subsystem per-distribution (#10154), similarity score: 0.71

Closed similar issues:

• [WSL 2] Multi WSL2 distributions use the same network namespace (#4304), similarity score: 0.71
• Allow bridged networking for WSL 2 (#4472), similarity score: 0.71

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[zcobol]

@try-agaaain you just hit one of the WSL2 limits! All WSL instances are sharing the same network namespace. It's by design.

[try-agaaain]

@try-agaaain you just hit one of the WSL2 limits! All WSL instances are sharing the same network namespace. It's by design.您刚刚达到了 WSL2 限制之一！所有 WSL 实例共享相同的网络命名空间。这是设计使然。

Are there any related posts that explain why this design was chosen? Is there a possibility of adding a feature in the future where different WSL instances have independent networks?

[4-FLOSS-Free-Libre-Open-Source-Software]

Sad news:

From just released v2.4.5 changelog
Add user warning letting users know bridged networking will be deprecated

Bridged mode works very well as it is now in WSL-Version: 2.4.5.0