I have a Huawei E220 UMTS/3G modem, which connects to my MacBook via USB. When I want my virtual Linux machines to use that internet connection, I could install the modem drivers in Linux and try to use the modem directly. The drawback would be that my Mac itself could not use that same internet connection at the same time. The better way (IMHO) is to use "shared networking" in the PD VM settings, and to set "Internet Sharing" in the Mac's preferences to share the Parallels NAT ethernet adapter, in my case this is "en3". This setup works and allows the VMs and the Mac to use the UMTS connection together. But oddly, PD3 brings up an error message the next time the VM is fired up: I think this is a bug, this setting does not "interfer" but instead is the one and only way to go, at least when you are offroad... More about this here.
switch off sharing internet - that is what the box says. But it's nonsense. When I switch off sharing my VMs can no longer reach the internet through the UMTS modem! Internet sharing is vital in this configuration, when I want to use the modem for Mac OS X AND Parallels VMs at the same time.
My PD3 is build 5582, and my Mac OS X is 10.5.1 It makes a big difference whether the Mac is connected either - via Ethernet or Airport (WLAN) or - via Modem/USB or Bluetooth Your suggestion or the software's warning dialog msg is true for Ethernet or Airport but not for Modem / USB / Serial / Bluetooth connections, IMHO. Of course, I am not that network professional, so maybe I am wrong. But my setup works.
Please, try to use Host-Only for this. To enable Host-Only Networking with Connection Sharing, do the following: 1) Open Configuration Editor for your VM by clicking the "Edit" button in Parallels window when you have VM selected but not running. 2) Select "Network Adapter" from the list on the left side. 3) Set your VM to "Host-Only" networking (mind that "Enabled" and "Connect cable at startup" settings should be checked too). 4) Go to Mac OS X System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet Sharing. 5) Set "Share your connection from" to your Internet connection interface. 6) Enable "Parallels Host-Guest Adapter" (also may be called "EthernetAdaptor (en2)") in "To computers using" list. 7) Click the "Start" button. If you have Mac Firewall running, you need to check "Personal Web Sharing" in the list of allowed services (or just disable the Firewall). 8) Check your VM's Internet connection. You may need to reboot your Mac.
after I ran into problem using my setup as described some postings earlier, I switched to the host-only networking as you have explained, and it works great. Thank you MaximS.
