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om3rx
Contributor
Contributor

macOS Big Sur Fusion 12 NAT no internet connection

Hi,

Running latest macOS Big Sur with Fusion 12. Nothing changed in my virtual machine Windows 10 however internet connection is not working

173 Replies
lanceasbury9924
Contributor
Contributor

Same issue on Bridged. Neither NAT or Bridged are useable

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lanceasbury9924
Contributor
Contributor

The suggested fix allowed for connecting to some cleartext HTTP websites but still can't view many sites OR update Windows/Linux.

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DBUH
Contributor
Contributor

Hi there, I'm having the same problem as everyone here it seems. I'd like to attempt to implement this solution. Do you just enter this into the terminal? Or something else?

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fabioz23
Contributor
Contributor

at least on MBP 16" 2019 (with macOS 11.1, 11.2 and 11.3 beta) your fix is not working.

this forum is a garbage, there're many different problems.

My problems are related only to Wifi bridged connection, the rest is working as normal.

DBUH
Contributor
Contributor

My issue was that WMWare would connect with internet while I wasn't connected to the VPN in Cisco AnyConnect, but once I connected in MacOS I would lose my connection in VMWare.

I wasn't able to fix it using the Terminal solution a few posts up, but what I'm doing now is disconnecting from the VPN in MacOS and I installed Cisco AnyConnect in VMWare Windows and Connect to the VPN there. Now good to go!

Just wanted to throw out an alternate solution in case it would help anyone.

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tm1664
Contributor
Contributor

Exactly the same problem as @fabioz23. Many are toting fixes that resolve issues that exist after previously modifying their network configuration at a system level, or using (certain?) VPN clients on the host while running guest VMs that may have done so for them (why not just run the VPN in the guest?) . These "fixes" will not work for our problem. If you look at the title of the thread you'll see it's technically about NAT no internet connection, not bridged no internet connection. Our problem is with bridged Wi-Fi... can be reproduced easily on a fresh install of Fusion and in a fresh Windows 10 guest. As noted in my previous comment, the issue doesn't appear to affect Linux guests (Ubuntu in this case), based on that it leads me to believe something within the guest needs to be reconfigured, perhaps a VMware tools update is needed to resolve this issue after changes to Windows over time via patching, etc. We should probably make a separate thread specifically for this issue that's not caused by excessive OS tweaking or bonkers VPN clients that jack up the network stack. This issue exists with common configurations and can be easily reproduced; with that said, VMware really needs to address this and soon. Seriously. Parallels really is starting to sound better by the day.

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fabioz23
Contributor
Contributor

i've reported to Apple the bug, it seems that is needed a check between Fusion developers and macOS devs.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/677034

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marcelofares
Contributor
Contributor

This last version that came out update being:
VMware Fusion Pro 12.1.1
Not yet solved the problem of the network adapter with problem in NAT mode.

Borange
Contributor
Contributor

I know this might be a late reply, but for me I got it working by setting the DNS to 8.8.8.8. If you are not familiar on how here is a guide:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-your-pcs-dns-settings-windows-10

Malte1511
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry VMWare all this did not work for me - meanwhile I have changed to a competitive product working perfect with my M1 MacBook Pro.

So far I was happy - but due to this issue you lost a customer using WMWare on Mac and Windows since version 4.5. 

Thanks anybody for trying to find a solution but if the manufacturer does not identify an issue based on the numbers of support and forum requests as well as not fixing an issue, Fusion 12.1. was the last version I paid for!

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marcelofares
Contributor
Contributor

Really. If so far no one has found a definitive solution, it is because it does not really exist.
If anyone has a paleative solution to work in NAT mode, please share. I am using Paralles too.

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felipefr
Contributor
Contributor

I used Fusion 11 on Catalina and upgraded to Fusion 12 on Big Sur. Here's what I found:

Fusion 11 on Catalina managed the NAT. Fusion created "vmnet" interfaces and managed them itself. VM traffic going through the host basically came from Fusion, which means the source IP address was the host's. VPN clients (I use GlobalProtect) were fine with it, because they recognise the packets as coming from the host.

Fusion 12 on Big Sur is using a host bridge. Fusion creates a bridge and a regular "en" interface for the VM. It puts the VM interface on the bridge AND puts an IP on the bridge and binds to it (to behave at least as a gateway, DHCP server, and DNS server). In this case, traffic coming from the VM is managed directly by the host and uses the IP address of the VM (ie. NAT is not done by Fusion; it's done by OSX). VPN clients (such as GP) will not route traffic which doesn't come from the IP address of the host, so the VM packets don't go anywhere.

A solution for this, as elsewhere discussed in this thread, is to change the VM network configuration to "Bridged Networking". In this case, Fusion will also create a host bridge, but instead of putting an IP address on it and acting as a gateway, it will put the external networking interface (eg. en0 if you are on Wifi) on the bridge, too. This means your VM is directly connected to the outside network. While this expose your VM (so ensure you have firewalls configured in the guest), it allows you to install a VPN client in your VM. Not ideal, but it works.

Ideally, VMWare should fix Fusion and expose a vNIC-level option to fallback to the old behaviour. People caring about guest network performance could use the new model with a host-managed bridge. People caring about their VPN clients working from the host could choose Fusion-managed NAT.

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marcelofares
Contributor
Contributor

I find it so funny that after all this time, VMware has not yet fixed such an apparent problem and that, you have been sending your customers to another manufacturer.

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tomeq82
Contributor
Contributor

@felipefr - You're 80-95% right here. For most of the users, bridged networking doesn't go at all with wifi connections while it seems to work on fixed connection. NAT somehow CAN be made to work well for any connection types. This is not about just VPN on host. The issue is that all traffic going via bridged connection for some reason is broken eg. http/https trafic doesn't work while most of other traffic do work like windows file sharing, dns, ping, ssh. So this is not pure bridge, something is happening inbetween.

Addition to your findings - macOS is taking care of the whole guest traffic, this is true. This causes trouble with DNS name resolution in NAT mode, as Fusion forwarder/resolver is in conflict with ANY resolver running on host! This is completely ridiculous. I have analyzed the traffic between host and guest and apparently, when something is running on udp/53 on the host (for example - Cisco AnyConnect + Umbrella or any other antivirus, any other vpn that secures DNS queries) vmWares resolver can't. Two services can't listen on the same port. Easy as 1-2-3.

vmWare should definitely rework the network stack as it seems that they didn't understood it or misunderstood new Big Sur architecture. 

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wd123
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vmWare should definitely rework the network stack as it seems that they didn't understood it or misunderstood new Big Sur architecture. 

Decisions were made to abandon the (working) kext architecture for networking, and switch to the Apple-approved networking stack.  Reasons for this change allegedly are:

The downside to this decision is:

  • Problems with networking may rely on Apple fixing something, rather than VMware being able to fix it themselves.

 

I understand that a decision was made to transition to a new network architecture, for reasons.  What I do not understand is that we have a thread here with a number of workarounds that seem to work for the various problems, yet it appears that VMware is simply waiting for Apple to fix something on their end to allow Fusion to work properly as it is.  Instead of, you know, just incorporating workarounds into the Fusion product itself so that it can work as customers expect.

I don't work for VMware, so I have no insight into the specific decisions they've made, or whether they have a solution or a workaround in the works.  Or if they're simply waiting indefinitely for Apple to change something to make the VMware product work as expected again.  What if Apple has decided that their architecture is behaving as designed, and nothing is to be "fixed"?  What is the contingency plan?

It's been what, close to half a year with no public mention of progress, milestones met, or even a plan of action.  Other than a mention on Twitter that "It's a bug in macOS".

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tomeq82
Contributor
Contributor

@wd123 - first thing first, Twitter is not a good way of solving technical problems for paid products. This is simply insulting to the paid users. Secondly, vmWare can't cope with new Big Sur network stack. Kexts are gone and vmware knew about this for a long time. Apple will probably not fix anything as it seems it works well on the system side, it seems quite reasonable, software implementation of the guest networking on the vmWare side is wrong. Apple can tune their solution here and there but they need to have side to talk with. Sadly speaking, they have none. 

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hollistonma
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm glad I found this thread.  I've been using Fusion since 4.x... to run Windows on MacBook Pros.  My requirements for Windows are fairly simple...need to access the Internet for Quicken and 3 other Windows programs.

Last year I upgraded Fusion from 11 to 12 when I upgraded to Big Sur which was running on my Late 2013 MBP.  At that time I had no issues with internet access...even on Big Sur 11.2.3.  Network adapter was set to be bridged.  And the Fusion device had its own IP address assigned by me through our router.  (All of our devices on our home network have IP addresses assigned through the router.)

Last week, the 2013 MBP started shutting down randomly and would only work when connected via HDMI to another monitor.  As a result, I bought a new 16" MBP running Big Sur 11.2.3 and used Migration Assistant to move my files, etc. from the 2013 MBP to the new one.  Successfully did so with no errors.

That's when I discovered this issue on the new MBP (which is assigned it's own IP address).  Quicken would only download some account information some of the time.  Thinking the issue was with Quicken I tried to reset online services for the accounts in question however that didn't work.

After some searching I found this thread and tried to manually set DNS addresses on Windows 10...which didn't work.  Also tried reinstalling the network adapter and VMware Tools and am now stumped.  (By the way, the old MBP's Windows 10 running under Fusion 12.1.1 still can access the internet with no problems.)

Now to my question:  the only way I've been able to access the internet on the 16" MBP is to set the network adapter to "Share with Mac".  What is the disadvantage of doing so compared to the "Bridged Autodetect" setting?  Are there any advantages compared to Bridged Network?  If VMWare ever fixes this issue, should I go back to Bridged Networking for my use case?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

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Ccalifan
Contributor
Contributor

I add my name to the already long list of people impacted by this issue 😞

Is there any official statement from VMware?

I might be just daydreaming but, is there any tentative date for a fix?

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haggan
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cbwarrix
Contributor
Contributor

Having the same issue, paid $200 for the Fusion Pro version, same issue.  Wasted an entire day on this so far, beyond annoyed.  I can't get any of my Windows VMs to connect bridged or NAT at this point.  So frustrated, as are my clients who I'm unable to help at this point.  Projects are being delayed because of this half-baked software. 

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