Two virtual NICS in Win 7 to the same physical NIC on macbook

W

Wilbertv

Bit poster
I have a (simple?) question about networking in VB. Situation which I would like to get is as follows:
1/ Parallels on Macbook Lion with Win 7 as Guest OS. I know how to do that.

2/ Within Win 7, two virtual network connections:
* Network connection 1 = VPN --> this is to connect to my company LAN to use email, chat & backend systems. This access requires a SSL VPN (Juniper Network Connect, which is not setup as a split tunnel. So, all traffic goes through the VPN; local resources in the 192.X.X.X. domain can't be accessed as long as the VPN is up).

* Network connection 2 = Local network (192.X.X.X), local file system on my macbook, local NAS, local network printer.

In the physical world, a comparison would be to have one physical computer with two physical NICs, where each NIC is connected to a different network (Company LAN and internal network (192.X.X.X), respectively).

This setup, I think, would allow me to access my companies network & systems via the VPN (virtual NIC 1), but - at the same time via virtual NIC 2 - gives me access to files on my macbook, access to my local network printer & local NAS storage. Local here is in the 192.X.X.X. domain.

I think Parallels can support different virtual nics in different modes. However, I am not sure whether each virtual NIC needs to be binded to a different physical NIC or whether a physical NIC can support more than 1 virtual NIC? And if the latter is true, would my suggested setup work, as I am not sure whether the VPN would still monetize all the traffic?

Thx in advance for any feedback!
KR,
Wilbert
 
Hi,
Parallels support two cards in different modes. They can even can be both bridged to the same physical card. But I don't expect that VPN will work in the described way, because advanced VPN clients automatically disable all routes except VPN'ed or setup firewall rules as soon as VPN connection is established.

some time ago I researched behavior of one of the VPN client and it simply disconnected VPN connection as soon as it detected that there is an unexpected route.

So I think that this will now work no matter in virtual machines or real physical hosts :-(
 
Btw, did I understood right that both VPN and local network has the same network address?..

If so, then you could try to switch networking-type to Shared and if VPN client doesn't disable other routes/connections, you will be able to access Mac OS using address 10.211.55.2
 
A few more notes:

You can access your files on Mac via Parallels Shared Folders. The same way via Shared Folders you can access NAS, if it is mounted in Mac

Printer, if access to is is configured in Mac, can be accessed via Parallels-configured shared printer (this should work out of the box without any configuration, just try to print something from Win)
 
Feedback

Hi Elric,

First off: thx for your quick response!

As to your comments: the VPN connection and the internal network will have *different* IP addresses. The IP address which is assigned to the VPN connection is being taken care by the VPN concentrator at my companies network. The IP address which is assigned is - most of the time - in the 131.X.X.X range. The IP address of my own internal network is in the 192.168.1.X range. Because we have two different networks, that's the reason of my question :)

The Parallels shared folders is a good suggestion, so that might be an idea. Yes, my NAS is mounted in Lion. So, again, as to your suggestion, it should be possible then to access the NAS via shared folders.

The printer I am not so sure, as this is a wireless printer with an IP address on the 192.168.1.X network. IF the VPN monetizes all traffic and it is not possible to access the 192.186.1.X network, then I can only use the printer when I kill the VPN. Which is OK for me, as I don't use the printer a lot. So, no big deal.

Anyway, I appreciate your feedback and I think I have enough info to have a stab at it and works things our (or not :)).

KR,
Wilbert
 
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