Guest OS to control AirPort?

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NamelessB

Bit poster
Hi there,

My situation is that I need to connect to a wireless network using Windows XP, which I have installed inside Parallels, and not OS X.

How would I go about giving my Windows VM control of my AirPort card so that were someone to connect to an open port on whatever IP I had, it would connect to Windows?

Thanks!

-Ben
 
It sounds like a question for the Bootcamp people

(a) can WinXP do this under bootcamp?

(b) can the same settings be used by the VM?

Hugh W
 
Well, Bridged Networking will probably take care of your needs. But if you really want full control of the airport card, you will need to use BootCamp as Hugh pointed out.

a. Yes, under BootCamp this can be done.
b. No, Parallels Desktop does not support direct access to the network card.
 
Thanks very much for your replies.

When I have my computer connected to my router with XP inside Parallels, and the network device set to my AirPort card, I see two connections (with independent IPs) coming from the same MAC address. Is it possible to eliminate the one of these which is managed by the host OS? (OS X)

Thanks,

-Ben
 
Eliminate the OS X IP? Well, perhaps you want to use Shared networking then forward all the ports to the Windows side. It will not eliminate the OS X connection, but it will be more transparent.
 
If you want a service on Windows to be accessable from the guest OS then you will need to use bridged networking.

Shared networking will not do the job (apologies to Eru). Shared networking sets up a NAT firewall and hides the guest OS behind the NAT. This causes the shared system to be mostly protected from the outside world, however it also causes it to be impossible to access any software servers running on the guest from anything but the host. Port forwarding in the Parallels NAT server is unreliable at best. (On my hardware anyways)

For this use you will need bridged networking. It makes use of the fact that TCP/IP allows as many IP addresses to be assigned to the same physical MAC address (network hardware) as one wishes. It sets up 2 IP addresses with seperate network stacks, one for the guest OS and one for the host OS. This makes the rest of the network think that the guest OS is just another machine on the network, so any hosted network services will then work from the guest OS. If you want to figure out which is which, just assign a static IP to one or both of the guest or host OS. Obviously the guest and host OS cannot use the same IP in bridged networking, just like 2 seperate real machines cannot share the same IP address. You will have to set the IP in the machine itself, not in a router, as networking equipment usually can only assign one static IP per mac address.

You can get rid of the IP used by mac os, however then your host OS wont be able to talk on the network. (i.e. no internet access from the host os). To do this simply set mac system prefrences->network->airport->advanced->tcp/ip->configure IPv4 to OFF.
 
unused_user_name, Shared Networking COULD do the job if he were to configure the natd and ipfw daemons to forward everything to the Windows side from the OS X CLI.

Otherwise I agree with everything else.
 
Thanks for your help. unused_user_name, your solution works great. Is there anyway to then create a virtual network adapter to share the connection from the guest OS to the host OS (i.e. hiding the host behind the guest, rather than vice versa)?

Thanks a lot!

-Ben
 
NamelessB,
there is no true way for the Parallels Guest OS to take over your physical network adapter, so no. You have done what I originally described, and unused_user_name so nicely wrote out step-by-step.
The way you could emulate your objective would be to set Shared Networking back up, then use the ipfw and natd daemons to forward everything to the Guest OS. As a general practice I don't think you would want to do this, and if you only use the Windows side, you might be better off with BootCamp.
 
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