Please review if you are having bridged wireless network issues

[Pat_Lee]

Based on the various forum posts, I would like to consolidate and collect more information in this thread. Please respond here even if you responded elsewhere, it will allow us to more easily find trends if everyone responds here:

If you are having problems with bridged wireless networking:

1) What Mac do you have?

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

4) What base station are you connected to?

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur?

I am sure the networking folks will have more questions, but I would like to start here.

Thanks for your help in trying help us to better understand what is going on.

Best,

Pat Lee

Senior Product Manager - Mac Products

VMware

[lawrance]

Running freebsd 6.2 as a guest, system locks up when scp'ing files across the network - if the interface is set up in "bridged" mode. Does not occur with "host only" mode.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=101274&tstart=0

1) What Mac do you have?

Mac Mini 1.83ghz core duo

Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)

Wireless Card Locale: Worldwide

Wireless Card Firmware Version: 1.1.9.3

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

10.4.10

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

G

4) What base station are you connected to?

D-Link DI-524

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

System is up to date, no it does not help

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur

Not applicable.

[lajaro]

Looking further into this problem (bridged networks with the Airport card in SR MBPs). and trying out some of the suggested resolutions, I came across an interesting log entry in the system.log file:

Sep 4 12:21:00 LJR-MBP kernel[0] Your ethernet driver is not compatible with vmware's bridged networking.

Funny enough, after a search I haven't found any other posts citing a reference to this log entry.

Anyone else?

[wingdo]

Is any progress being made on this major bug? It has been a month since Pat asked for feedback and there hasn't been one word from vmware in this thread since then about the issue.

As someone who has moved from Parallels to vmware, I am amazed at how calm this thread has been. If PD went a month without responding to a bug which kept killing OS X's network connection, their forums would be jumping with people complaining, while everyone over here on these forums would be laughing at how PD isn't responding to the issue.

I need to have a stable network connection. It would be bad if the VM's network connection died. HAving the host's network connection die as well is unacceptable for a release product.

[Xipper]

I assume the "bridged network issue" is the one that results in the airport process' high cpu utilization.

1) What Mac do you have?

MBP 2.4Ghz (Santa Rosa)

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

10.4.10 with all public updates

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

B and G

4) What base station are you connected to?

Linksys, Cisco, others

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

applied, no help

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur?

not tested

\-

any ETA on a resolution to this? This is a major issue, and NAT is not a viable option for anyone using IPSEC or VoIP. This either needs to be resolved or VMware should start offering refunds.

VMware should also step up to the plate and offer all users that purchased this "beta" copy of 1.0 full support until after at least the common bugs are resolved. Of course, this doesn't add value when the support department is incapable of providing meaningful support anyway.

The product is no longer "beta", so why are we suffering through problems that should have been resolved from Beta testing?

[lawrance]

I agree that some form of response is required - sooner rather than later. These things happen and I'm quite willing to wait for a fix, as long as I have the necessary information to make a decision inside the 30 day refund window.

[stevenoetic]

I agree completely. I know these things happen, and I know fixes take time. I even knew there was an issue when I purchased 32 days ago. Please, VMWare, give me some real news to make an informed decision on! I'm getting tired leaning on Parallels build 3188, but it's my most reliable solution so far.

[admin]

Hi everyone, I'd like to make 2 points here:

First, we (VMware) are definitely listening, and we're thankful both for your patience and for the wealth of information you're providing. If we had an internal example of this problem, we'd have it fixed by now Since we don't, we can only conclude that there are many base stations/network configurations we're compatible with and some that we're not, and so we're trying to gather information from those of you that have examples that aren't working.

Second, if you're having this problem with a WRT54G, which version? I ask because I used to see some of the same symptoms between my MBP and a WRT54G before Fusion even existed... more specifically, I have two WRT54Gs, one really old one (v1.1) which ran (and continues to run) fine with an MBP, with or without Fusion, and with various different firmware (stock, DD-WRT, OpenWRT), and a second newer one (v5) which in my experience works fine with PCs and horribly with MBPs. Using the MBP (without Fusion!) against the WRT54G v5, DHCP didn't work at all, and using a static IP, things would work fine for 10-15 minutes and then lock up the base station so that nobody in the house, PC or Mac, had wireless access until I rebooted it. I ended up replacing that base station and have never tried Fusion with it, but short story is some of these same problems people are reporting here are possible even without Fusion, and the various revisions of WRT54G are really not the same product (I wish they didn't use the same model number!), and if you have a WRT54G and see this problem, please tell us the version number as well.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to investigate this internally with a variety of base stations and configurations, and continuing to listen to you all, and we have every intention of making this work flawlessly.

[nesmex]

I'm glad VMWare is listening and working to solve this annoying issue

Nevertheless, I'm experiencing dropouts in my bridged wireless network and I do NOT have any WRT54G hardware installed.

I am running a 2Wire modem (1701HG Gateway) and an Airport Extreme (n) connected via Ethernet to the modem, so the wireless signal is coming from the Airport. The IP's are being provided by the 2WIRE, since the Airport base station is set to bridge mode. I am connected to my ISP by PPPoE through the 2Wire.

As I posted previously, every 3 out of 5 times that I boot up Vista within Fusion I do not have internet connectivity in Windows, if I switch to OSX, I can navigate.

Some other times I even lose internet access in both the host and the guest, this is happening more often now than in past weeks. BTW I got the "... your network has been compromised and will be unavailable for 60 seconds..." once.

In other occasions, I boot and have network connectivity and all seems to work fine for a while, all of a sudden the Internet access is lost.

I've tried using the Ipconfig release and renew command without success. For now, my work around is a 3Party Software, Network Magic.

As you can see, at least in my case this is very erratic behavior, but it is happening more frequently lately.

I used to have the same exact setup in Parallels and this never happened to me.

BTW: MBC2D, 10.4.10, Airport Extreme card firmware 1.1.9.3, Airport Extreme 802.11n (fast Ethernet) Ver 7.2.1, Windows Vista Business, with all patches applied.

Don't want to use NAT since I would lose access to my Bonjour printer and my shared HD's connected to the Airport

Regards,

[wingdo]

First, we (VMware) are definitely listening, and

we're thankful both for your patience and for the

wealth of information you're providing. If we had an

internal example of this problem, we'd have it fixed

by now

Well that sure doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. You can't even reproduce this? Good lord, I can't stop it from happening.

[Mij]

I'm seeing the same problem here - or so I think, because I am not sure if it can be linked to VMware in my case. But after some googling, this page is the only result that seems relatable to my situation. So I'm reporting in case it helps.

My TKIP MIC problem seems to be strangely rare; today it happened for the very first time (twice!), though I have been using VMware for about a month, with normal - heavy downloading from the bridged wifi (all the needed updates for a fresh install of WinXP SP2 + Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition updates + ( SVN connections through a CheckPoint VPN-1 SecureClient) + Oracle client + random web surfing).

I am not sure about exactly what was going on the first time it happened, but the second one was during a 500 MB copy through Windows filesharing (I was downloading from a XP laptop which was the only other user of the Wifi at the moment). Both details are first-timers (downloading that much from a Windows share AND from this particular user), so perhaps they are important.

I have tried to repeat the transfer three times, and the problem has not appeared again...

My data:

Linksys router, WRT54GL v1.1, 11g networking

MacBook Core2Duo 2.16 GHz

OS X 10.4.10 (fully updated except for QuickTime and iTunes, which I guess won't matter)

[kalex]

Are there any updates on this issue? i just bought a macbook and ran into same problem. my problem is that with airport running i can't even get IP assiged from my DHCP server. my settings are:

1) What Mac do you have?

Macbook c2d 2.16, 3GB, 120GB

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

10.4.10 with latest updates.

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

Only B and G

4) What base station are you connected to?

Linksys WAP54G

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

Yep

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur?

No N

My DHCP server is my firewall netscreen 5xp. Macbook works perfectly on my WAP54G, so as other devices. all obtain IP addresses. VM refuses to obtain IP in bridged mode. works fine in NAT.

Please help

Alex

Thanks for your help in trying help us to better understand what is going on.

[ruleboy]

I had this problem with both Windows and Linux virtual machines. I solved it by uninstalling VMWare Fusion and then reinstalling VMWare fusion.

I had migrated from one Mac to another...perhaps that was the cause?

[kban]

1) What Mac do you have?

Macbook core duo (new)

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

10.4.10

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

Airport extreme N & G

4) What base station are you connected to?

aa

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

yes, no

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur?

don't think I can do that

The problem started when I replaced my Linksys WAG54G with the airport extreme. I wonder if the problem relates to the WPA security since I had no problems for a few weeks running Fusion using WEP security. Now I get random lockups of the network connectivity and quite frequently I get the annoying popup box telling me the network has been compromised and will be shut down for a minute. When it gets to this point turning airport off then on doesn't help (otherwise this often resurrects connectivity).

[michaelr]

It there any chance VMware will fix this problem or should we just give up? They have known about it for months but no fix and no indication that they are even looking at it.

[admin]

See magi's post - we want to fix it, but haven't been able to reproduce it.

[admin]

I had this problem with both Windows and Linux

virtual machines. I solved it by uninstalling VMWare

Fusion and then reinstalling VMWare fusion.

I had migrated from one Mac to another...perhaps that

was the cause?

That would cause networking problems but is also not what this thread is about. If you just migrate Fusion over, a bunch of things are expected to break including networking and Boot Camp.

[kban]

If it helps, this is the error message from the airport basestation when the "network compromised" message comes up

Sep 18 20:29:48 Severity:1 MIC integrity error (reported from STA) src_addr=00:1c:b3:b3:b3:ee

[admin]

Thanks for the continuing feedback and patience, everyone. From all the info we've seen so far, I do think that the problem is specifically related to WPA. (But I'm personally using Fusion against a couple different base stations configured for WPA, with no problems. That's not to discount the problems that you all are reporting, just to explain why it's hard to track down.)

[fauzzo]

hallo,

I got the same issue: when connecting OS X wireless to my netgear dg834 router, XP virtual machine was causing error messages and the wireless network link were lost. I am using router's DHCP and WPA security.

Like somebody else has suggested here, I have set a fixed IP to the virtual host XP and I have disabled the "Zero Configuration" service from XP.

The problem seems to be gone in this way.

No problem when using wired lan.

I am using a mac book core 2 duo. OS X 10.4.10 with dhcp for both wired and wireless network.

[whosyourtator]

VMware is using the same mac address for both the guest os and host adapter which causes network issues.

1) What Mac do you have?

Macbook Pro 2.4 GHZ

2) What version of Mac OS X are you running?

10.4.10

3) Are you running B, G, N or a combination of wireless networking technologies?

N

4) What base station are you connected to?

Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n Router

5) Have you applied the latest Airport Update from 7/30 and does it help?

Yes, using version 7.2.1 firmware.

6) If you are using N networking, if you drop back to G or B networking, does the problem occur?

Problem occurs regardless of N, G, or B