Using Hyper-V with a Wireless Network Adapter

Using Hyper-V with a Wireless Network Adapter

  • Comments 10

Out of the box Hyper-V does not support connecting virtual machines to wireless network adapters.  As a primarily server focused product this is a reasonable limitation - especially given evils that we need to do to get wireless network adapters to work with virtual machines.  But all is not lost - it is possible to setup an internal virtual network (as discussed yesterday) and utilize Internet Connection Sharing (as discussed here) to get you up and going.

The first thing to do is to create a new internal virtual network switch:

  1. Open the Hyper-V Manager and select your server.
  2. Select Virtual Network Manager... from the action pane (on the right).
  3. Select New virtual network and choose to Add an Internal network.
  4. Give the new virtual network the name you want hit OK.

Now to setup Internet Connection Sharing:

  1. Open the Control Panel and open Network and Sharing Center.
  2. Select Manage network connections from the list on the left.
  3. Locate the icon for your wireless network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
  4. Change to the Sharing tab.
  5. Check Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection.
  6. If you have multiple network adapters you will need to select the specific entry for the internal virtual network switch.
  7. Click OK.

You can now connect virtual machines to the internal virtual network and allow them to access the Internet through your wireless network adapter.

Cheers,
Ben

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  • Please add 8 and 7 and type the answer here:
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  • Thanks for the post. I actually had just figured this out myself. :)

  • Thanks for the post! It def. helped me out.

  • How about enabling access to the VM's from the internet? Maybe a static route?

  • Nathan -

    There is basic support in ICS for mapping specific services (like an FTP server) through.  But to do this properly you would want to use full-fledged routing software (like RRAS) instead of just using ICS.

    Cheers,

    Ben

  • This however does not work for domain joined servers since most network administrators will disable ICS through Group Policy. I have a demo laptop with Hyper-V running. Many times I am accessing the internet through the corporate wireless. It is not possible to set up ICS in such a scenario for the guest VM's since the ICS is disabled through GPO.

    Any other ideas?

  • Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the post; really helped me out!

  • thanks for the post.  It was really helpfull.

  • Cheers Ben, this trick still works with Hyper-V running on Windows 8.

    But I don't understand why Hyper-V still doesn't support a wireless adapter, that shouldn't be too hard to implement?

  • Thanks for the info. I was just fighting with this yesterday!

  • Same problem Win8 - cannot get this to see the 8 wireless adapter when in VM Drive with XP loaded.  Been struggling for 2 weeks to get internet and usb  drive to be seen on Win8 Hyper V drive with XP, no luck.

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