T
Tony Gravagno
(Modified cross-post from microsoft.public.virtualpc since this may be
more of a network question. This inquiry might answer "why did my
network die" questions we see from some people here.)
We run VPC on more than one real XP PC. To get network access from a
VPC I have a Loopback Adapter bridged under the MAC Bridge
MiniAdapter, and then I bridge the real NIC with those. Each adapter
has a different IP, for a total of 3 IP's per real PC. When they are
all bridged the only IP and MAC address that is visible to the network
is that of the MAC Bridge Miniport adapter. Even though I assign a
unique IP, this adapter has a hardcoded MAC address:
02-00-4c-4f-4f-50 (which for geeks that translates to...)
smiley null L-O-O-P
If I have one PC running this configuration with VPC, there is no
problem, VPC communicates with the LAN and WAN just like any real PC.
If I have two PCs with this configuration, even through the IP
addresses are static and different, the MAC is still the same.
Here's the kicker: When my router sees two systems with the same MAC
address it locks up the whole network. This happened with a Linksys
BEFSX41 (with decent firmware). But the first time it happened I
thought the router was going bad, so rather than buy another hardware
router I converted an old PC into a router using IPCOP freeware - and
after all of the effort to build that box the same thing happened to
it as soon as we brought up VPC on a second box. The good news is
that now we have two good router/firewalls.
- Can I change the MAC address that MAC Bridge Miniport uses to be
anything other than 02004c4f4f50 ?
- How do other people use MAC Bridge Miniport on more than one PC on
the same LAN?
For anyone who knows VirtualPC:
- For anyone else running VPC concurrently on different real PCs in
the same network, how do you avoid this MAC address issue?
- Is there a better way to configure networking with VPC on the host
so that we still get access from guest to host/LAN/WAN?
- Might we be able to use one of the routers now to masquerade the MAC
of one of the boxes? (I'm not a networking guy so this is a shot in
the dark.) This isn't a real solution - what about those people who
run 50 VPCs in the same network?
- Looking at Settings for our VPC's I see the "Network" setting shows
the name of the real NIC, but the .VMC file shows the MAC Bridge
Miniport down in the ethernet_adapter node. There is only one
controller there. Is this a clue to a misconfiguration? We have
several VPC guests working this way.
Thanks!
more of a network question. This inquiry might answer "why did my
network die" questions we see from some people here.)
We run VPC on more than one real XP PC. To get network access from a
VPC I have a Loopback Adapter bridged under the MAC Bridge
MiniAdapter, and then I bridge the real NIC with those. Each adapter
has a different IP, for a total of 3 IP's per real PC. When they are
all bridged the only IP and MAC address that is visible to the network
is that of the MAC Bridge Miniport adapter. Even though I assign a
unique IP, this adapter has a hardcoded MAC address:
02-00-4c-4f-4f-50 (which for geeks that translates to...)
smiley null L-O-O-P
If I have one PC running this configuration with VPC, there is no
problem, VPC communicates with the LAN and WAN just like any real PC.
If I have two PCs with this configuration, even through the IP
addresses are static and different, the MAC is still the same.
Here's the kicker: When my router sees two systems with the same MAC
address it locks up the whole network. This happened with a Linksys
BEFSX41 (with decent firmware). But the first time it happened I
thought the router was going bad, so rather than buy another hardware
router I converted an old PC into a router using IPCOP freeware - and
after all of the effort to build that box the same thing happened to
it as soon as we brought up VPC on a second box. The good news is
that now we have two good router/firewalls.
- Can I change the MAC address that MAC Bridge Miniport uses to be
anything other than 02004c4f4f50 ?
- How do other people use MAC Bridge Miniport on more than one PC on
the same LAN?
For anyone who knows VirtualPC:
- For anyone else running VPC concurrently on different real PCs in
the same network, how do you avoid this MAC address issue?
- Is there a better way to configure networking with VPC on the host
so that we still get access from guest to host/LAN/WAN?
- Might we be able to use one of the routers now to masquerade the MAC
of one of the boxes? (I'm not a networking guy so this is a shot in
the dark.) This isn't a real solution - what about those people who
run 50 VPCs in the same network?
- Looking at Settings for our VPC's I see the "Network" setting shows
the name of the real NIC, but the .VMC file shows the MAC Bridge
Miniport down in the ethernet_adapter node. There is only one
controller there. Is this a clue to a misconfiguration? We have
several VPC guests working this way.
Thanks!