Enable Virtual Machine to Access Internet with ICS

In order to experience Hyper-V, you may choose to use Hyper-V on a laptop, and it will likely come with an issue when you create an external virtual switch bounding to a wireless NIC due to hardware compatibility.

For this reason and requirement, Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) may help us. ICS makes use of network address translation (NAT) mapping individual IP address of local computer (virtual machine) to unused port number in the TCP/IP stack of ICS host computer. For more information about ICS, please refer to the article here.

Internet Connection Sharing (From Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Connection_Sharing

To achieve this in the Hyper-V environment, please follow the steps below:

Demo configurations:

Hyper-V Host: Windows Server 2012 R2

IP address of the Wireless NIC: 192.168.0.100/24

Virtual Machine (Windows Server 2012 R2): 192.168.1.100/24

1. Create the Internal Virtual Switch (Figure 1).

1

Figure 1: Create the Internal Virtual Switch

2. Connect your virtual machine to the new virtual switch (Figure 2).

2

Figure 2: Assign the Internal Virtual Switch to the VM

3. Find the wireless NIC with internet access then share it with the Internal Virtual Switch (Figure 3).

3

Figure 3: Share the wireless NIC

4. Change the IP address of the Virtual Switch and assign the IP address as the Default Gateway for the Virtual Machine (Figure 4).

4

Figure 4. IP configurations

After that, your virtual machine can have the Internet access (Figure 5).

testxx

Figure 5: Access the Internet

Note: ICS provides the DHCP service by default. After sharing wireless NIC, the Virtual Switch will get an IP address automatically (192.168.137.1). If DHCP is enabled in your VM, it will get an IP address within the same subnet from ICS host computer, also the Gateway and DNS.


Keyword: Hyper-V, Virtual Switch, Wireless NIC, Internet Access

March 31st, 2014 2:15pm

While this was a requirement with earlier versions of HYPER-V there is only one scenario where this would be required, and that is when your VMs MUST share the same IP address as the management OS.

That is the only scenario where 'sharing' of a connection would be required. 

Since Client Hyper-V has been introduced with Windows 8 / Server 2012, wireless NICs have been supported.

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March 31st, 2014 3:24pm

I just wanted to thank you very much for your description on how to get connected to the internet via the ICS option. I think this is the most applicable route to get around the internet issue.

Thank you once again.

April 11th, 2015 12:09pm

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