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akahige
Contributor
Contributor

browser based network authentication not visible to guest OS

I have a networking problem with VMware Fusion 7 and a Windows XP guest.

When joining a wireless network which has no WEP/WPA authentication -- it looks like an open connection but requires a browser-based user name and password login (you see this sort of setup in restaurants and coffee houses) -- the assigned IP address is not picked up by the Windows XP virtual machine. The host OS knows that it's online (full connectivity), but the guest thinks there's no network connection.

Is this a bug due to the peculiarity of the host's network authentication or am I missing something?

Has anyone experienced this issue? Anybody have any suggestions?

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nancyz
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi akahige,

Welcome to the community.Smiley Happy

akahige wrote:

I have a networking problem with VMware Fusion 7 and a Windows XP guest.

When joining a wireless network which has no WEP/WPA authentication -- it looks like an open connection but requires a browser-based user name and password login (you see this sort of setup in restaurants and coffee houses) -- the assigned IP address is not picked up by the Windows XP virtual machine. The host OS knows that it's online (full connectivity), but the guest thinks there's no network connection.

Actually, there should not be additional setup for wireless network if your Mac OS have network connection. You don't need other dial-up steps in your VM, the VM should have the same network environment as your OS when your VM is using NAT or Bridged network.

Could you please let me know how did you access the wireless network in your VM? Thanks.

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akahige
Contributor
Contributor

Hi nancyz,

Thanks for your response.

I wasn't thinking that there would be any additional setup for wireless networking, but rather to compensate for the oddity of the authentication.

The network configuration is whatever defaults Fusion ships with. Looking at the preferences, I can't actually tell. Looks like NAT.

The issue is not that the VM will not reach the wireless network, the issue (I think) is that the authentication isn't being passed along to the VM.

It works like this (or rather doesn't):

• You can see all of the available wi-fi networks in the menu bar network selector as usual

• The network in question appears to be open, i.e. no key necessary to attach, however, this isn't true. If all you do is select it, you can't actually use it. While you don't need a WEP or WPA key (entered in network configuration), you use a web browser and an HTML form to "login". As soon as you open the browser, you get redirected to a form where you have to enter a rudimentary user name and password. At that point, you are authenticated on the otherwise "open" network, and given an IP address.

• In the Mac's network config, you can see the IP address, but opening the network config for the XP guest, it has no IP address at all.

After authenticating with the browser, all of the applications on the host OS have access to the internet, but the VM doesn't see that an IP address has been issued. In "normal" situations, where you either have an open network, or a secure network for which you have an appropriate key, the VM works just fine.

Does that make sense?

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