I wrote the bootloader and first kernel sketch using Bochs exclusively, due to the nice GUI for register inspection, instruction-by-instruction stepping etc. But it hasn't been tested on bochs for ages, so now I don't know. In particular I have never done any networking with bochs; my guess is that if it has virtio it would be pretty easy to support it. Go ahead and try, let's know how far it gets and we'll help you out :-)