Win 7 direct wifi hw access?

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by mstroukoff, Nov 11, 2013.

  1. mstroukoff

    mstroukoff Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Been using parallels for ever and just ran into an issue that has me stuck.

    Everything works fine under normal conditions but we recently switched to hw profile configured wireless access points at work. You can NOT get a mac to connect to our corporate wifi (even though you can see them in the wifi menu), you must use Juniper Networks pulse client from a PC.

    So here's my question. Is there a way to allow the VM direct access to the wifi hardware so that it can natively connect to the wifi hotspots at work? I've tried shared, bridged "default", bridged "wifi", etc but still cannot connect.

    I can use the pulse client to VPN from home when sharing a wifi connection made through the mac but can't figure out how to connect the VM to wifi that is not connected to the mac. I wondered if there was a way to disable the wifi adapter on the mac side and use bootcamp native hw drivers to access the wifi adapter from within the VM?

    Info: Win7 Pro Sp1, 15MBP2012 Retina (16GB/756SSD), Mavericks, Parallels 9.0.23140
     
  2. mstroukoff

    mstroukoff Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    No one have a similar issue? Anyone know how to enable VM to use one network (Wifi) while the Mac is connected to a different network?
     
  3. serv

    serv Forum Maven

    Messages:
    817
    Parallels VM can only bridge to existing WiFi connection. VM has no control over physical WiFi adapter which is driven by OS X.
    If you need to have a separate connection from within Windows seek for a USB-WiFi dongle and assign the device to VM via Devices > External devices menu.
     
  4. Elric

    Elric Parallels Team

    Messages:
    1,718
    If I understand the situation correctly, then it looks like either it is needed to use USB (as serv said) or wait for Pulse client released for Mac OS - I see at their site that they are anouncing Mac version soon.
     
  5. mstroukoff

    mstroukoff Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    Both great solutions, Thx!

    I'll pick up a usb/wifi dongle tomorrow (just saw a couple at BestBuys for ~$25). Pulse on Mac would be ideal but I'm not sure if/when we'll have an corporate engineered install for Macs,I'm a BYOD user, we don't have officially supported Mac configs. On the plus side, if the usb/wifi works I'll be fine using the VM to connect to our secured wifi (with Pulse for Win in PD) and the Mac connected to our public access wifi (which has VPN traffic blocked).
     
  6. mstroukoff

    mstroukoff Bit poster

    Messages:
    9
    That did the trick! I picked up a Netgear WNDA4100 Dual Band USB/WiFi adapter and can now direct connect. Great advice folks - Thank You!!!
     

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