Phantom ARP Responder

[jamoiholland]

In my host-only/vmnet1 network, there is something with a VMware MAC address responding spuriously to ARP requests, and I have no idea what it is. I've changed the vmnet1 subnet to 10.10.10./0/24, and if I run only one VM concurrently, a Windows Server VM, which has one NIC in vmnet1, and ping 10.10.10.254, something replies to the ARP. My Mac's vmnet1 address is 10.10.10.1, and the Windows Server NIC's IP address is 10.10.10.20. Ideally I want another VM to use 10.10.10.254, but this is not working because this phantom responder keeps responding to the ARP before my own VM. With only the Windows Server VM powered up, or any other single VM powered up for that matter, something responds to 10.10.10.254. This corresponds to the highest IP available in the DHCP range from vmnet1/dhcpd.conf, but when I try to reduce the DHCP IP address range to finish at 149, it either gets overwritten, or the networks deamons fail to start (even though i've delted out the DHCP HASH lines in the networking file).

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

JH

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I know you're on Fusion, but it is the same in Workstation and there I knew where to find the details in the documentation:

VMware Workstation 12 Pro Documentation Center

In short, it is the DHCP server that is already assigned to the .254 address.

--
Wil

[jamoiholland]

Many thanks Wila. There does not seem to be a similar section in the Fusion documentation, but the IP address allocations (.1, .2, .254) all seem to be the same in Fusion as in Workstation.

I'd like to change the DHCP server address, or even turn off DHCP, in vmnet1, but this seems to break the Fusion networking service. I guess I'll use another vmnet where I can control it fully.

Cheers,

JH