Cannot access VPN from guest

[PeteHelgren]

I have read through multiple version of this problem and I still cannot seem to sort this out.  Host is running Windows 10 Enterprise 1909.  Host is on a wireless network.  Host also connects to company VPN using a Microsoft WAN Miniport adapter using L2TP connection.  VPN works flawlessly.

Guest is in a Workstation 16 Player Environment.  Guest OS is AIX.  

I read through several articles and have tried using both bridged mode and NAT.  There are a couple of things that diverge from what I read:  The L2TP adapter, though active when the Guest boots, is not in the list of available adapters when Bridge mode is selected.  The closest I can get is the just the wireless adapter itself which is the Intel dual band Wireless AC 7265. 

The wireless adapter uses IP addresses (192.168.1.1/24).  Host is using DHCP and is at 192.168.1.114.  Gateway is 192.168.1.1.

The VPN adapter uses DHCP to assign IP"s and the host as VPN address of 192.168.70 22.  VPN is configured to use the default gateway of the remote system.  tracert confirms that traffic from the host is using the gateway of VPN rather than the wireless router gateway.

In bridge mode:
Guest is configured to use DHCP as well and is at 192.168.1.113 (a wireless adapter IP). Guest can ping the wireless gateway (192.168.1.1) . It cannot ping the host nor can it ping the VPN interface

Active Routes (on HOST):
Network Destination Netmask   Gateway       Interface            Metric
0.0.0.0                      0.0.0.0      192.168.1.1   192.168.1.114   4275
0.0.0.0                      0.0.0.0       On-link          192.168.70.22   36

In NAT mode:

Guest configured to receive IP via DHCP and is assigned 192.168.47.129. It cannot ping anything but itself.  At this point, I would think that I could at least ping 192.168.47.1  which is, presumably, the gateway.  Without any route out, I am not sure how it could "find" the VPN network.  If there was a gateway on the 192.168.47.0 network I could reach, I might be able to build a static route to find the VPN.  But right now I am stuck.  I cannot see any way the guest can find the VPN network on the host.  Installing a VPN client on the guest is, unfortunately, not an option.

Ideas on how to approach this would be most appreciated.  It seems like others have solved this issue so I must have just missed something but I haven't been able to find just what I missed.

Thanks

[ender_ · Accepted solution]

Bridge with VPN almost certainly won't work. NAT mode should work, since that makes VMWare share your host's IP address (basically your computer acts as a NAT router for the VM). Check the virtual gateway IP with ipconfig - at least for me, it's not .1, but .2; ping from the VM should also work for any host that you can ping from the host (note that traceroute does not work in my experience - you only see the first and last hops).

[PeteHelgren]

Man!  You are awesome.  I have been struggling with this for weeks and all it took was a simple change to the IP.  I changed the gateway to 192.168.47.2 and now I am connected, end to end.

Really appreciate the answer.

[manuelRivera1]

Hello, 

I am facing the same problem as here. and this is what I get Default gateway is empty,  DNS suffix : localdomain, IPv6 address: fe80::9d97:7de:85bf:d493%17 , IPv4 address: 169.254.212.147 and subnet mask: 255.255.0.0

Does this tell us what is wrong ?

Thanks inn advance. 

Manuel Rivera

[RDPetruska]

Not really.  The 169.254.x.y IP address is an APIPA auto-assigned address when the network is unavailable.