All, I have a (relatively) simple question, and the answer might be straightforward as well, not sure. What I want to do is the following: Have a Win 7 VM running in Parallels. This WIn 7 VM connects to wireless network A and runs a VPN. The Macbook itself (Lion, soon to be Mountain Lion) is connected to wireless Network B, without a VPN. So, the Win 7 VM uses the same physical NIC (obviously), but uses a different virtual network connection. You might wonder: why don't you try this yourself and why do you want this? At the moment, I have no Parallels and also have no access to two different wireless networks, so I can't test it. The reason doing this is that wireless network A is high speed wireless (7 mbps), but has a monthly data cap on it. Wireless network B is a slow wireless network (1.5 mbps) and has no data cap. The Win 7 VM is for work (hence the VPN) and uses the high speed wireless, while I use the other wireless network for all my other stuff, like private email, web browsing, streaming of audio, downloading, and so on. I wish I could use the high speed for this (and I can), but I will run soon into my data limit and have to pay a ridiculous fee of $15/GB (!) when I go over the data limit (which is set to 15 GB/month). So, the question is: can I do this with/within Parallels running on my Macbook or do I need two physical networks cards (e.g., USA wireless stick besides the build-in network card)? Thanks for any feedback and any other suggestions/thoughts around this question are welcome! KR, Wilbert
You need two physical network cards. A VM can only bridge to the same wifi network (same SSID) to get a unique address or share the existing wifi connection (the Mac acts as host and gives an IP (I think 10.x.x.x) to the VM). Steve
