ESXi 6.7 Home Lab with Wireless USB NIC

[valteesjunior]

Hi All.

I'd like to install a Wireless USB NIC in my ESXi Host at Home Lab, because I cannot connect a ethernet cable (My PC and my Wireless Router are in different rooms). Is it possible?

Best Regards.

Valter Junior

[scott28tt]

My gut feeling is no, given that ESXi is built for enterprise-grade rather than consumer hardware, but you might find something here:

VMware Compatibility Guide - I/O Device Search

[daphnissov]

No, it's not possible. AlessandroRomeo68​, that fling is for USB NICs and not USB wireless NICs. ESXi cannot work with wireless adapters. As stated by Scott, this hypervisor is not for consumer-grade hardware.

[sjesse]

Think outside of the box in this case, look at a powerline adapter or a wireless bridge. These let you connect the eithernet cables into adapters and on the esxi side its just the standard wired connection.

[valteesjunior]

Hi sjesee.

Actually I'm using a TPLink Powerline Adapter, but this device causes electrical interference in some equipments in my home, and because that I was searching for an alternative solution.

Anyway, thank you all.

Kind Regards.

Valter Junior

[vFouad]

if it's a home lab,

Do you have a spare/old wifi router? or a raspberry pi with a wifi card?

Set that into bridging mode and connect it to your wifi network... then plug the ethernet from ESXi to the bridge router/homebrew pi contraption...

That works for my home setup

And yes I agree those ethernet over power line are very noisy!

I hope this helps..

Fouad

[valteesjunior]

That's a good idea! I'll try to do that.

Thank you!

Best Regards.

[eworc]

This works for ESXi 8.0 at least, and it's simple.

How to Add Wireless to a VMware Virtual Machine - Virtualization Howto

[adrianromo37]

I was in the same situation and what I did was configure as a bridge an old TP-link wireless router and then connect the ESXi host with ethernet. it is working wonderfully.

Basically am receiving the network trough wifi and then pass to the PC by cable.