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:
- Open the Hyper-V Manager and select your server.
- Select Virtual Network Manager… from the action pane (on the right).
- Select New virtual network and choose to Add an Internal network.
- Give the new virtual network the name you want hit OK.
Now to setup Internet Connection Sharing:
- Open the Control Panel and open Network and Sharing Center.
- Select Manage network connections from the list on the left.
- Locate the icon for your wireless network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
- Change to the Sharing tab.
- Check Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection.
- If you have multiple network adapters you will need to select the specific entry for the internal virtual network switch.
- 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
Update 5/2/2016: If you are running Windows 10 check out this blog post https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/virtual_pc_guy/2016/05/02/windows-10-hyper-v-and-wireless-a-new-way-to-make-this-all-work/
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.
This didn't work for me until I set the internal network's IP v4 as static, and set the IP to 192.168.137.1, and the DNS as 8.8.8.8. I think when the connection is shared it is supposed to do something like that using DHCP but it did not work after hours of trying. (windows 8.1, running xp in Hyper-V).
I'm running Windows 8.1 Enterprise. When I go to the sharing tab of my wifi connection I can enable Sharing but I don't see the option to select a network connection to share with.
Good trick!
Using Windows 8 as the parent and setting up my VM with Windows Server 2013 R2, I managed to get the connection setup but it would not let me connect to the internet, keep showing as limited connection on the child. I had the same issue with the bridge method.
Giving up I ended up trying to RDP to the VM, in which I had to enable Remote Desk from the Server Management tool on the VM and just like that the internet connection started to work!
Don't work with Windows 8.1?
– No Internet access
Thank you! You'd think this would be communicated in Hyper-V on the Virtual Network Manager
After Sharing my Wireless connection with vEthernet (internal) the internet getting slow, each time IE take 22 Sec to Resolve host name, any Suggestion ?
Thanks Ben, this works with windows server 2012 installed on my laptop
Can't get this to work with Generation 2 machines :/
How do you do it so the WLAN connection is seperated from the host OS
For example:
Wired ETH:HOST only vlan=1
WLAN:guest only vlan=3
Hello Ben. Thanks a lot for sharing your expertise with the people.
Please guide me in the right path too..
SCOPE : I am trying to set up a lab using Server 2012 and hyper-v , where the first thing I want to achieve
is that my Virtual Machines are able to achieve IP address through the DHCP server which happens to be
the HOST machine.
I ll start off with 2 VM ( Win 8,7 ) and slowly grow my network by installing more VM like Server, Exchange Server etc.
Here is the detail of the network and hardware and all the work I have done step-by-step
Hardware : Machine I5 processor ,8 GB Ram not connected to any router or switch.
I could not get the wireless to work but connects to the home network using the Ethernet Card : Realtek Card 1GB
Software : Windows Server 20102 r2
Steps I have done so far :
1. Ran the add roles and features and installed DHCP, DNS and Hyper-V.
2. Started Hyper-V and added the Virtual Internal Switch and then added two new VM ( Win 8 )
and added the internal virtual switch to them.
3. If I give static IP to the Virtual Internal Switch in Host and then the two VM. All of them in same subnet.
Disable firewall in all the machines. RESULT : All the VM and the host machine are able to PING each
other.
However, if I provide static IP to the Internal Switch in HOST and leave the VM on DHCP, I am not able to
get IP address to my VM.
With that being said, what is it that I am missing in the picture , in order to achieve that.
HERE IS THE WINNING FORMULA :
My friends after 5 days of research and hit and trial and 1 pack of Marlboro… lol
I finally got my lab up and running.
I went in to the DHCP stats and saw there was no DHCP request my the client VM machine.
Got me thinking and ……. I decided to configure the DHCP scope in my host machine.
Stumbled across this video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch
Boom , I saw the DHCP stats and the VM has an IP address from the HOST MACHINE..
Its 3 am in the morning and I am a happy camper…
For my Labs i use win 8.1 host machine. External switch is created with wireless adapter and used on all guest OS's to get to Internet. All works perfect. No issues. Used to try 3 machines all of them had Intel Wifi adapters.
This doesn't work on Windows 10 Hyper-V.
Thank you! Got me out of bind! Pardon the pun!
Hmmmm i still have issues with Wifi.I constantly lose connection to the internet even when hyper-v is no tin use.After removing internal virtual switch everetyng works.
Hi,
Not sure if I did something wrong, but ICMP messages are passing through i.e. I could get result of ping
However when I try to do http / https to download some files it hangs looks like some firewall issue but not sure how to proceed
Thanks