Disclosed are systems and methods for exchanging network traffic between a client and a virtual machine running on a physical server. The described system provides a virtual network interface controller (NIC) that emulates access to a physical local area network of the physical server. The described system further includes server-side and client side components of a packet injection layer that exchanges guest network packets between the client and the virtual machine using a communication channel without injecting the guest network packets into the physical local network of the server.