Network settings Wifi bridge issues

[jordinc]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for this thousands and thousands of answers in this community. I am new into this, and I am glad to be part of it.

Recently I have updated my Mac Book pro 15 to Mojave, and I am using VMWare Fusion Pro 10.1.0 with Windows 7 guest.

I had no problems with this before, but after this update I am having some, at least, curious network issues.

I have the VMWare setup as a network bridge (Autodetect), and there is no problem if I am using a wired connection with the host, but I have no connection if the host is using Wi-Fi to access to the network. I have checked the Privacy/Security settings in the Mac, and also the firewall settings. No way.

If the setting is NAT ot Autodetect with wired connection I have no issues.

The guest is configured as DHCP. When I have the issue, the guest can't access to the DHCP server, the ping is not responding as well, event if I am do it with the host address.

Any suggestion?

thanks in advance

[nancyz]

Hi jordinc

VM MAC address will be changed to macOS MAC address when sending/receiving packets to/from router via Wi-Fi, and if certain security check in enabled on  Server/Router , they will 'think' the request(say, DHCP request) is invalid.

Does your  Bridged VM has DHCP problem when using wired network, say, Ethernet adapter?

[jordinc]

Hi Nancyz

thanks for your answer.

There is no security Mac filter in the router. The bridge VM is working fine with DHCP and wired network.

The problem comes when I update the Mojave OS.... before this update all this settings were so smooth.

Jordi

[Legend0]

You're having the same issue as me, it's a bug, see this post: VMware Fusion - incorrect MAC address bridge mode - dhcp broken

PACKETS DON'T LIE - This is NOT a security issue, VMware had this working up until Fusion 10. This also works in Parallels. The issue is in Fusion 10&11, they are using the incorrect MAC address in the DHCP DISCOVERY packet.

[alekappa]

I recently run into a similar issue, i couldn't access my local network from a Windows 7 Pro VM with bridged network while on wifi, but everything's running fine with the ethernet cable.

After a lot of troubleshooting i finally discovered a solution, in short i'll try to explain my tests and the workaround which solved the problem.

During my extensive tests, i installed many fresh VM and the most meaningfull clue had been to discover that i didn't have any issue with wifi bridged networking in a Windows 10 guest VM, nor in a legacy Windows XP VM ... so there should have been something very specific to compatibility with Windows 7!

Then i noticed that the network card driver installed in the Windows 7 VM and in the Windows 10 VM are not the same... the Win7 had the "Intel(R) Pro/1000 MT Network Connection" while the Win10 was running a "Intel(R) 82574L Gigabit Network Connection"; i decided to further investigate, and looking into the .vmx file of both VM i realized the following difference:

[W7PRO.VMX]

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

[W10PRO.VMX]

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e"

I manually altered the value of the "ethernet0.virtualDev" param in the Windows 7 .vmx file, as follows:

[W7PRO.VMX]

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e"

When i restarted the Windows 7 VM, the guest OS has immediately detected a network device recognized as a "Intel (R) 82574L Gigabit Network connection" and it has installed new drivers for it ... and then, ta-dahhh, everything's was finally running well again even with bridged networking via my Macbook Pro integrated wifi card!!!

I suppose that in the recent Fusion updates there has been a regression in the code (maybe in a kext) that emulates the Intel E1000 network card, creating problems and issues when the bridge mode involves the wifi card.

I sincerely hope that my experience can be useful to solve your problem.

[ip2210]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been tearing my hair out for a week

[bcheever]

This worked, thanks so much! I too was going crazy after moving my VMWare fusion VM's (win7, Ubuntu, and Flare VM) over to my new Macbook with Mac OS Mojave.  Kudos to alekappa​

[ScottRCS]

Thanks Alekappa - your process fixed my issue as well! Legend.

My issue was similar to the OP's - but bridge mode worked reliably from a Windows 7 VM (Migrated OSX Sierra/VMWare Fusion 😎 right up until i tried to establish a second connection out of the VM. For example, i could run some software i use that uses port 44818, but when i'd start VNC viewer on 5900, the network connection would fail and require a reboot of the VM to establish any connection in any mode (bridged or NAT).

This also only appeared on wi-fi, with everything OK when i'd use a USB-C to ethernet adapter for a hard wired connection.

[MarkNethercott]

I had the same problem. Edited the .vmx file and the network is working.