My current setup:
- VMWare Workstation 10.0.3
- Host OS is Windows 8.1 x64
- Guest VM is Windows 8.1 x64
- Host has 1 wired ethernet and 1 internal wireless NIC
- No antivirus (except windows defender) is installed
- Firewall on both the host OS and guest VM are turned off
What I'm trying to accomplish is to have the host OS use the wired ethernet to connect to an internal private network and the guest VM to use the wireless NIC in bridge mode to access the internet but still keep the host OS isolated from the internet.
I have followed the VMWare guide which instructed me to disable everything on the wireless NIC except VMWare Bridge Protocol
. I changed VMNet 0
from automatic bridging to bridge the specific wireless NIC and set my guest VM to use bridging. I connect to the wireless network from the host OS and then attempt to get a DHCP address inside the guest VM but it does not work. I even tried assigning a static IP and pinging the gateway which also does not work.
I tried uninstalling the wireless NIC drivers, reinstalling them, resetting the winsock catalog and ip stack, uninstalled and reinstalling VMWare, but nothing seems to work. I have also tried to connect to the wireless network through the same wireless NIC on the host (with all the appropriate protocols enabled) and the host is able to connect and pull a DHCP address from the router; it just will not work in the VM.
Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?
EDIT:
The network topology over here is such that the internet facing network is wireless only and the private internal network is wired only, so testing the internet connection on a wired NIC isn't possible. Plus, this is a laptop and it only has 1 wired NIC so using something like an external wireless-to-ethernet bridge is out of the question.
I was using a wireless USB adapter and connecting that directly to the guest VM and this works but is a huge headache since over time, the USB adapter seems to stop working inside the VM and I constantly need to unplug the adapter, plug it back in and even sometimes have to go so far as to disable the device and re-enable it inside the guest VM's device manager (and yes, the drivers for the device are made for windows 8 and the device is fully compatible).
EDIT2: If it helps any, the wireless card is a Broadcom 802.11n and I'm guessing it's the BCM43XX chipset.
UPDATE If I leave everything checked in the wireless NIC properties (ipv4, ipv6, file sharing, etc…), the bridging works. As soon as I remove everything except the VMWare Bridge Protocol, it fails to work.
Best Answer
Wireless connections cannot be bridged. The OpenWrt wiki provides a good explanation:
The fact that the “Bridged Host” is virtual in your case doesn’t matter.
VMware Fusion on OS X can bridge wireless, it’s probably using some sort of MAC NAT.
“Media bridges” and generic WiFi repeaters open multiple connections to the upstream AP with different MAC addresses, circumventing the problem.
A very simple solution for your problem is to use a USB WiFi adapter. You can connect the entire USB device to your VM and use “native WiFi” inside the VM.