VMware Communities
MaxVM2k
Contributor
Contributor

Network bridge not working on Intel AC8260 WiFi adapter

I have a Lenovo Y700 laptop with an Intel AC8260 wireless adapter, Windows 10 Pro 1607, VM Workstation 12.5. If I setup bridged networking using the WiFi adapter, the guest VM gets and ip from dhcp, I can ping the guest IP from anywhere on the network, but the guest network traffic (TCP and ICMP) doesn't even reach the gateway. Strangely enough, it looks like some UDP traffic works as the logs on my router show DNS requests from the guest VM passing through. If I switch the bridge to the Ethernet port everything works as expected. This happens regardless of the guest OS, I tried it with a Win 10 and Free BSD (pfSense) VMs and they both exhibit the same connectivity issue. For the record, I did update the WiFi drivers to the latest Intel Pro Set available (19.10 Aug. 21) and it didn't make any difference.

Reply
0 Kudos
8 Replies
MaxVM2k
Contributor
Contributor

Updated to 12.51 and the problem is still there. Bridging with WiFi adapter is broken :smileyangry:

Reply
0 Kudos
TheQuestion
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have a Lenovo Y700 laptop with an Intel AC8260 wireless adapter, Windows 10 Pro 1607, VM Workstation 12.5. If I setup bridged networking using the WiFi adapter, the guest VM gets and ip from dhcp, I can ping the guest IP from anywhere on the network, but the guest network traffic (TCP and ICMP) doesn't even reach the gateway. Strangely enough, it looks like some UDP traffic works as the logs on my router show DNS requests from the guest VM passing through. If I switch the bridge to the Ethernet port everything works as expected. This happens regardless of the guest OS, I tried it with a Win 10 and Free BSD (pfSense) VMs and they both exhibit the same connectivity issue. For the record, I did update the WiFi drivers to the latest Intel Pro Set available (19.10 Aug. 21) and it didn't make any difference.

Sounds about right. There isn't a single VMware user in existence that hasn't had a problem with Bridged Networking. And this includes me:


Bridged Network Connection Problems in VMware Workstation 11

And these guys:

And some more guys:

You get the point. What adds to the problem is that each person who has Bridged Networking problems had the problem triggered by completely different things, so there isn't a universal solution to solve these types of problems unfortunately. For example, the problems with Bridged Networking that I've personally have had were caused by two things:


1. My VPN Client. You can't utilize Bridged Networking if your host computer is connected to a VPN client (such as Hotspot Shield, Private Internet Access, ExpressVPN, etc.). You can only play that game with NAT (and in fact, many hackers do just that).


2. My anti-virus suite's Firewall. For the longest time, Bitdefender Firewall would block Bridged Networking traffic from VMware virtual machines like what is mentioned here:


https://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?/topic/44215-bitdefender-block-vmware-bridged-network/

Bitdefender FINALLY fixed this, but it was a problem that was existing for a long time.


I'm going to assume that you neither use a VPN nor Bitdefender Internet Security, correct? And therein lies the problem with Bridged Networking. Each person has a completely different reason for Bridged Networking not working than the next guy. This makes fixing these issues very complicated. But the good news is that I see you have Windows 10 Pro, which means we can try various different things in general. The first thing I suggest you try is to turn off smart multi-homed name resolution. You can do this through the Local Group Policy Editor (run a Command Prompt as "Administrator", and type gpedit.msc into the command prompt and hit Enter). The setting is located at:


Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Network>DNS Client>Turn off smart multi-homed name resolution


You set this policy to "Enabled", click "Apply", then click OK. Even if this doesn't fix the problem, you still probably want this turned off anyways since (according to US-CERT) smart multi-homed name resolution makes you extremely susceptible to DNS hijacking:


Controlling Outbound DNS Access

Anyways, that's about the extent of my ability to help you with this problem. Hopefully you can get this fixed.

MaxVM2k
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for the reply. During my quest to find a solution I noticed that the bridge networking is a common source of problems with VM Wks. You would think that a company with the resources of VMware would be able to get this fixed by version 12.5 of a major product :smileyangry:.

Coming from Virtual Box where I always used bridged networking on all kinds of hardware/OS combinations without any issues this is really boggling to me :smileyconfused:

Anyway, back to your question, I'm not using any 3rd party firewall or AV. I have the OpenVPN client installed, but the bridging issue started even before I had that. Since it is happening only with the WiFi adapter (it works as intended with the Ethernet port) I tried to tinker around with the advanced settings for the adapter without success. However I found another person with the same issue with the same Intel AC8260 ( networking - VMware Workstation: Bridge to Wireless NIC will not route traffic to wireless AP - Supe...‌) so it must be some sort of incompatibility or bug between the Intel Pro Set driver and the VMware bridge driver.

I'll give the "smart multi-homed name resolution" suggestion a try and report back if it works.


Thanks again!


UPDATE:

The "smart multi-homed name resolution" tweak didn't make any difference Smiley Sad

Reply
0 Kudos
TheQuestion
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Sorry for the lack of replies. Half of this is because I've been so busy. The other half is that I don't know what to say as far as helping you solve your problem. Still, there are some things I can address:


MaxVM2k

You would think that a company with the resources of VMware would be able to get this fixed by version 12.5 of a major product .

Well, it's not that they can't get it fixed; it's just that they break it with each new version released.

MaxVM2k

Coming from Virtual Box where I always used bridged networking on all kinds of hardware/OS combinations without any issues this is really boggling to me

Part of this is probably because Virtual Box is strictly written in C and C++. This helps with compatibility issues immensely. VMware Workstation is written in "code stew", so it tends to be more error prone. However, VMware Workstation also has more enterprise features than Virtual Box. An example of an enterprise feature that I'm currently using on a weekly basis is "Shared Virtual Machines" feature of Workstation. This allows me to access virtual machines on my host computer from any computer that has Workstation installed to it. The advantages of this over Remote Desktop is that I can change the settings of my Virtual Machine at any time. I can increase or decrease the RAM, expand the virtual Hard Drive, and anything else that I can as if the host was right in front of me! This is an incredibly useful feature, and is one of the many reasons I use VMware Workstation over Virtual Box (another reason being their fantastic 3D engine. Virtual Box can't even touch their 3d engine!).


MaxVM2k

so it must be some sort of incompatibility or bug between the Intel Pro Set driver and the VMware bridge driver.

Don't jump to conclusions too quickly now. Remember my post above? I thought the same thing myself, and I quote:


"All in all, I'm thinking it might actually be my aging hardware. I connect using an Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030. That was released in 2010, though I own the 2011 model." -Me when having Bridged Network Problems


And all that time it was actually the Bitdefender Firewall! So don't make the same mistake I did and dismiss it as a wireless driver issue. You never know just what it is until you actually get it working.


MaxVM2k

The "smart multi-homed name resolution" tweak didn't make any difference

Even if that doesn't make any difference, I'd still leave that tweaked due to the fact that smart multi-homed name resolution puts you at significant risk at being DNS hijacked. It's practically a security vulnerability programed directly into Windows 10!


Sorry I couldn't help you get your problem solved. Sorry the rest of the community couldn't help you either. One thing you can try before buying Tech Support is Private Messaging a VMware Employee. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll help you. Maybe they'll yell at you and tell you you're "abusing" the PM system. Who knows, but it's better than not trying at all. You can find a bunch of VMware Employees in this forum:


Cannot change network to bridged: No unbridged host adapters

VMware Employees have a grey box under their username that has the letters "VM" in it. Good luck!

TheQuestion
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

IMPORTANT UPDATE:


Today I made an interesting discovery. I logged into my Virtual Machine only to find out I did not have internet access. I was on the Bridged Protocol. I found that odd since I had networking yesterday under the Bridged Protocol, but not today. So the first thing I did was open an Administrator Command Prompt and type "ipconfig /all". When I scrolled up to the virtual network adapter, I noticed something was wrong. The IP address shown in the IPv4 section was something along the likes of 169.XXX.XXX.XXX (where the XXX represents numbers I didn't bother to remember). The interesting thing about this is that my IP range is 172.XXX.XXX.XXX (where the XXX represents numbers I don't care to type). What this means is that the VMware Network Protocol had, for whatever reason, assigned me an invalid IP address. This might be the cause of your problems was well! So what you're going to have to do is set a static IP Address to your Virtual Machine. But first, you need to gather information. Here's what you need to do:


On your HOST Computer:


1. Right click the shortcut to Command Prompt and click "RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR".

2. Type: ipconfig /all

3. Hit Enter, then scroll through the information until you find your Intel AC8260 Wireless Card.

4. Write down the information for "IPv4 Address", "Subnet Mask", and "Default Gateway".

5. Once you've written down this information, proceed to power on and log into your Virtual Machine.


On your Virtual Machine:


1. Click Start>Control Panel

2. Under the main Control Panel section, find "Network and Internet".

3. Under "Network and Internet", click "Network and Sharing Center".

4. On this page, you should see a section called "View your active networks". Under here, there should be three labels called "Access Type", "HomeGroup", and "Connections". Beside the word "Connections", there should be the words "Local Area Connection" written in blue. Click on "Local Area Connection".

5. In the window that pops up, click the "Properties" button in the lower left hand corner.

6. In the next window that pops up, click on the words "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" so that they are highlighted.

7. Click the properties button in the lower right hand corner.

8. In the Windows that pops up, click the radio button for "Use the following IP address", and set yourself a static IP address. This should be based off the information you gathered from your host earlier. For example, if your host machines IP address was 172.45.82.67, then you want to write 172.45.82.XXX where XXX is any number from the number 2 to the number 253. Make sure it is NOT the same number as your host computer's IP address nor should it be the same IP address as any other computer in your house. So back to my previous example, if your hosts' IPv4 Address was 172.45.82.67, then a good IP address for your Virtual machine is 172.45.82.120.


Fill in the Subnet Mask Address as 255.255.255.0, and the Default Gateway as whatever number you wrote down from your Host Machine (make sure it is the exact number that you wrote down).


9. In the DNS server section, click the radio button for "Use the following DNS server addresses". Set yourself a static DNS address. If you don't know what numbers to use, you can use OpenDNS's numbers which are the following:


Primary DNS server: 208.67.222.222

Alternate DNS server: 208.67.220.220


Once your static IP address is complete, your Bridge Networking should be working perfectly fine. Let me know if this works for you.

Reply
0 Kudos
MaxVM2k
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for all the useful information. The 169.xxx.xxx.xxx IP you got is the default address that Windows assigns to an interface set up to use DHCP when, for whatever reason, it cannot obtain an IP address from it. If I had to guess, in your case your VM could not get a valid IP from your DHCP server so, you entering the IP manually fixed the problem.

In my case, unfortunately the situation is a bit more complex. My VM gets a valid IP from my DHCP server, I can even ping the VM's IP from anywhere on the network, but for some reason, no traffic originating from the VM reaches or comes back (still haven't determined that) the gateway. It's not a firewall issue just the bridged interface not sending or receiving packets through the bridged AC8260 interface.

Reply
0 Kudos
TheQuestion
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are you sure your Virtual Machine has a valid Default Gateway value? I just Googled searched it right now. It seems it is possible to ping devices and Virtual machines on your network if you have a valid IPv4 Address and a valid Subnet Mask. This is true even if you do not have a valid Default Gateway, or the Default Gateway section is blank (on a Cisco Forum post, a person was able to ping his network printer even though he did not have a Default Gateway IP). This might explain why you can ping other VMs, but not connect to the external network.

Is your Virtual Machine's IPs DHCP? Or are they static? Can't hurt just to test the results of setting your IP address static. You can always change it back to DHCP with the click of a button.

Reply
0 Kudos
rupesh4321
Contributor
Contributor

I guess I'm experiencing the same problem. I have Asus zepherus m rod laptop...and my wireless adaptor is Intel(r) wireless ac 9560 160Mhz .

Now issue is that whenever I'm setting my networking adaptor to bridged mode my router is registering my host machine and guest machine both with same MAC address and that is why this connectivity problem comes. However if I switch to USB wireless adapter then also same issue persists, but if u changed to Ethernet adaptor then everything is solved...both machines get different Mac address as they should.

Anyone having any idea about this pls respond..

Reply
0 Kudos