If you’re a notebook user like I am you might have noticed that Hyper-V prohibits binding of Wireless LAN adapters to external virtual networks which essentially means that you cannot access resources on your LAN using your WLAN adapter from within a virtual machine. Microsoft considers this a security feature and a resonable thing to do on a server operating system while I think it is annoying since everyone should decide for {her|him}self and most of the time I want my virtual machines to access the physical network (say: Internet) once in a while.

There are some articles on the Internet explaining how to connect to your physical network anyway making use of ICS (Internet Connection Sharing). In some cases that does not work but I found a more flexible and reliable way to achieve the same. In this post I will explain the following:

1. Creating a new virtual network in Hyper-V
2. Connecting the virtual machine to the physical network bound to your WiFi adapter:
   1. Using Internet Connection Sharing to access the physical network or…
   2. …using a network bridge (recommended)
3. Configuring virtual networks

Creating A New Virtual Network in Hyper-V

Windows creates a new virtual network adapter which is used for communication of virtual machines. Once it has been created you can bind it to one or more virtual machines.

1. Open the Hyper-V Manager: Start > Administrative Tools > Hyper-V Manager
2. In the Actions pane on the right select Virtual Network Manager.



3. Select Internal and press Add.



4. Enter a descriptive name for this private virtual network and press OK.



5. To associate this network to a virtual machine, click right on the virtual machine and select Settings.



6. Under Network Adapter select the newly created virtual network and press OK.

You’re done. You have now successfully created a private virtual network and associated it to a virtual machine. To access the physical network follow these instructions.

Connecting the Virtual Machine to the Physical Network

There are two approaches to connect your virtual machine to the physical network. Either use ICS or bridge both adapters. The latter has a major advantage and I recommend it (typical disclaimers apply): the bridge can configured for DHCP preserving flexibility when on the road. The former relies on static network addresses.

Using Internet Connection Sharing

This is fairly easy and done quickly. If you’re lucky it works, otherwise use a network bridge.

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.

If this procedure completes successfully you’re done, otherwise follow these instructions.

Using A Network Bridge (Recommended)

Using ICS did not work for me. Activating it resulted in the following error written to the Event Log:

I tried several things one of them was a netsh winsock reset which didn’t help either. So I ended up bridging the virtual network and my Wireless LAN adapter which was, thinking about it afterwards, a better choice. Here is how I did it:

1. Open the Control Panel and open Network and Sharing Center.
2. Select Manage network connections from the list on the left.
3. Select both the physical network adapter (WLAN) and the virtual network adapter you’ve just created by holding down the CTRL key, right click on either one and select Bridge from the context menu. This will create a new network bridge.

That’s it. All that is left is to configure network settings of the bridge and the virtual machine.

Configuring Virtual Networks

Once both the physical and virtual network adapter have been bridged you can enable DHCP for the bridge thus allowing you to easily connect to other networks while on the road. This option is not available for ICS.

In the virtual machine I recommend setting up DHCP for the network adapter which is absolutely painless. Otherwise you have to manually configure network settings. In that case you typically want the virtual machine’s network adapter to be on the same subnet as the bridge so you have to provide the appropriate IP addresses yourself.

For example, if the bridge has been assigned the IP address 192.168.0.100 (assuming a /24 network) for the virtual network adapter you will have to choose an IP address on the same subnet ranging from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254. If you don’t know what this is all about you may consider brushing up things about TCP/IP networking.

I hope this post was helpfull. Thanks for reading.