Configure and implement Fusion virtual networking components on your virtual machine to connect to other virtual machines in your networking environment.

Fusion supports only Ethernet-based networking, but provides several options for connecting to networks.

  • A virtual machine can use NAT to share the IP address of your host system.

  • You can configure a virtual machine to bridge to a specific network interface on the host system. Fusion supports IPv6 in bridged networking.

  • You can create a VPN that includes only the virtual machines on your host system.

Note:

Fusion Pro includes advanced networking features. With these advanced features, you can change key networking settings, add and remove virtual networks, and create custom virtual networking configurations. The changes that you make affect all virtual machines running on the host system. For example, you can specify which subnet is used by Fusion or if a network adapter asks for confirmation before running in promiscuous mode.

This feature is available in the Fusion Preferences dialog box. To add custom network configurations, you must provide the administrator password.

In Fusion, when you edit settings for a virtual network adapter, you can choose from several types of network connections.

Table 1. Network Connection Options

Option

Description

Share with my Mac

If you want to connect to the Internet or other TCP/IP network using your Mac dial-up networking connection and you are not able to give your virtual machine an IP address on the external network, choosing this option is often the easiest way to give the virtual machine access to that network. The virtual machine does not have its own IP address on the external network. The virtual machine obtains a private IP address from the VMware virtual DHCP server.

Bridged Networking items

In the Bridged Networking list, you see various choices for bridging to one of the network interfaces on your Mac, including wireless and Ethernet. Using one of these options is often the easiest way to give your virtual machine access to a network.

With one of these bridged networking options, the virtual machine appears as an additional computer on the same physical Ethernet network as your Mac. The virtual machine can use any of the services available on the network to which it is bridged, including file servers, printers, gateways, and so on. Likewise, any physical host or other virtual machine configured with bridged networking can use resources of that virtual machine.

Private to my Mac

When you use this type of network connection, the virtual machine is connected to your Mac’s operating system on a virtual private network, which normally is not visible outside your Mac. Multiple virtual machines configured with host-only networking on the same Mac are on the same network.