Beta 4 WiFi Issues Still Exist

[dov]

I just upgraded to beta 4 and can not use the wifi adaptor. XP can not get an IP address from the WiFI interface - it always shows 0.0.0.0. The wired connection seems to work.

[dparks@cisco.com]

It also appears that if you are using VPN on the hardwire interface that there is no way to point to the VPN tunnel. A workaround or fix to this would be huge. This is not peculiar to this beta, I have not been able to get it to recognize a VPN tunnel built in the host os yet.

All in all, I love this software! Cant wait for the release (already purchased) and the USB... Could not resist, as I know we are all waiting on that ;-)

[mike3k]

I use a VPN connection in the guest OS and it works beautifully. I can still connect & disconnect the VPN in OS X without affecting it.

[ChessFan]

I just upgraded to beta 4 and can not use the wifi adaptor. XP can not get an IP address from the WiFI interface - it always shows 0.0.0.0. The wired connection seems to work.
I have the same problem. XP is unable to get an IP address. I've verified that I have the ethernet bridge setting pointed to Airport. This is very frsutrating ... :(

[jeffmurphy]

I just upgraded to beta 4 and can not use the wifi adaptor. XP can not get an IP address from the WiFI interface - it always shows 0.0.0.0. The wired connection seems to work.

The problem is that the AirPort is using its own mac address to broadcast
the DHCPDISCOVER and not the mac address of the virtual machine.

First note the mac address of your XP machine "ipconfig/all" and the mac address of your AirPort adapter "ifconfig en1".

Next, in a shell: sudo tcpdump -eni en1 src or dst port 67

Then do ipconfig/renew in XP.

You will that the outgoing packet originates from your AirPort adapter but the client mac address inside the packet is XP's mac address. This generally won't work because the switches that existing between you and the DHCP server won't be able to get the reply packet back to your laptop - the replies will be sent to the XP mac address, which the intervening network knows nothing about.

If you reconfigure to use the wired network, and repeat the above (but using en0 this time) you'll see that the outgoing packet has the mac address of the XP virtual machine and DHCP works.

This is probably a limitation of the AirPort driver (I'm guessing). It appears that you can't write 'raw' packets to the network without the driver altering the mac address.

[jeffmurphy]

OK. Here's a work-around.

1. Turn on "host-only networking".
2. Boot XP
3. It will get a DHCP address from Parallels.
4. Write down the address that it gets as well as the subnet mask.
5. Open Control Panel -> Network Settings and double click on
the Local Connection
6. Click Properties
7. Double click TCP/IP
8. Change to "use the following IP address" and enter the address
you wrote down, the subnet mask and use the address of "vi2"
as the default gateway. "ifconfig vi2" to find that address in an OSX
shell.
9. Enter a DNS server that makes sense to you.
10. In OSX, Open the system preferences and click "Sharing"
11. Click "Internet"
12. Turn on sharing "from" "Airport" and "to" "built in ethernet"

Go back to XP and try going to a website. I just did the above and that
works for me. It's a bit of a hack, but you are running beta software after all!

If you have multiple virtual machines, you'll need to manage the address
assignments manually.

Since you're using a private DHCP server, this will work even if you are
at work/school/etc and using some managed DHCP service.

[petro]

I had no problems. Just make sure the guest OS is bound to en1, and away you go...

[jeffmurphy]

I had no problems. Just make sure the guest OS is bound to en1, and away you go...

It will work if you are on a home network where the DHCP server is adjacent to you (not separated by switches or routers). If there's any networking between you and the DHCP server, it doesn't work.

The AirPort driver emits packets with its mac address, the DHCP server replies to the VM's mac address. That actually works when the access point is the DHCP server because the AirPort is in promiscuous mode and will see the replies. When the DHCP server is further away, the reply packets won't make it back because the mac address of the VM is unknown to the intervening network because no packets are ever seen with that mac address as the source address.