Use wireless AND ethernet

I am successfully using OSX Lion as my host and running Windows 7 in Parallels. But Windows 7 is my 'work' environment and the Mac is my personal environment. What I'd like to do is run the mac wirelessly through the airport and have parallels/Windows7 use the ethernet port so that they are on different networks. Is this possible? I see where I can configure Parallels to use the ethernet card. But is there a way to force the mac to use wireless even though an ethernet cable is plugged in?

 

Yes, there are two ways

- In the Mac OS system preferences -> Network drag AirPort adapter to be on the top of the list
or
- Set IP-address for Ethernet adapter be configured manuall and assign to it some invalid IP address (like 10.37.134.1, mask 255.255.255.0), empty DNS

 

Elric missed the critical part: setting the network interface in Parallels to bridged mode.

So as stated, in OS X Network preferences, drag Airport to top above ethernet. That way your Mac will use wifi. Then in Parallels, set Network 1 to bridged Ethernet. In this way, both your Mac and the VM will have unique IP addresses on the ethernet interface, but since wifi has higher priority, your Mac will use it instead.

Steve

 

Hi, that works like a charm, thanks! One question though, when you use the configure option in PD for the VM and set Network1 to use the ethernet, there is also the option to generate or use the MAC address. Should that be left alone?

 

There's usually no need to generate or change the MAC address. This is only necessary if, for example, your wifi router is using MAC address filtering for access and you've already entered a specific address on the router.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't touch it.

Steve

 

Steve, would this approach work when you have a Wifi-based VPN connection using IPSEC on the MAC side? I want to use the Free Wifi on the Mac side and the VPN on the Parallels Windows VM side. I tried to change the bridge network settings but it did not work. The MAC side ended up using the VPN connection even though it is second in order of preference on the MAc side. I suspect that it's because the VPN is predicated on the Free Wifi being available.