Networking?

[xhan]

I'll admit, I know very little of networking, but I'm using a university connection on a MBP, they will only assign 1 IP address per connection, so I only have the one, but when I connected to the internet using parallels it reset my network settings and kicked me off the network and I had to go and plead with the admins to reset my connection - even if they were impressed with windows on a mac!

My question is how exactly does parallels work with the network connection, I need a simple explaination lol! and is there any way to make it so it wont mess up my connection. I hate to admit that I need internet explorer :S

 

[dkp]

I'll admit, I know very little of networking, but I'm using a university connection on a MBP, they will only assign 1 IP address per connection, so I only have the one, but when I connected to the internet using parallels it reset my network settings and kicked me off the network and I had to go and plead with the admins to reset my connection - even if they were impressed with windows on a mac!

My question is how exactly does parallels work with the network connection, I need a simple explaination lol! and is there any way to make it so it wont mess up my connection. I hate to admit that I need internet explorer :S

You will need to use what Parallels calls "Shared" networking. Another name for it is NAT (Network Address Translation). In essence all the MBP and the virtual machines use a single address as seen from the WAN. That being the IP you were assigned by the University admin or their DHCP server when you connected to the network with your MBP.

There are some wi-fi hotspots (coffee shops, etc) that have this single IP restriction as well, so shared networking is quite handy. Your VM's can see anything on the network your MBP can see. This normally also means your virtual machines are invisible to other systems that are scanning your IP - they see the MBP but not your vm's. You wouldn't be able to share your iTunes library over the network, for example, if that library and the iTunes server is on a vm. There are work arounds if this is a problem.

 

[xhan]

thanks for the quick reply
reaallly stupid question, I'm afraid I must ask it - this is the same for cabled networks yes? I'd hate to change my settings to shared and have to go beg for forgiveness again!