VMware Fusion - 2 machines, can't ping each other

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I'm a little baffled. I have 2 machines running in VMware Fusion. Mac OSX and Mac OSX Server. I'm trying to follow along with the exercises in the Server Essentials book I have. Neither machine can ping each other. The Network adapter in Fusion is set to 'host only' so the two machines should be able to talk to each other.

The server is set to the following:

IP: 10.1.17.1
Sub: 255.255.0.0
Gateway: 10.1.17.1
DNS: 10.1.17.1
Domain: pretendco.com

The client is set to the same except the IP address is 10.1.17.2

In my Network preferences I have 'Parallels Host-Only Networking Adapter' set to 10.37.129.2 and 'Parallels Shared Networking Adapter' set to 10.211.55.2

Could anyone point me in the right direction for getting this working?

 

Yeah I thought it was a little odd. Changing it to class C makes no difference though.

 

is the server set to provide dhcp?

 

Nope. Both are set to manual IP. No DHCP running on the server.

 

You won't be able to do much with a class B subnet on a class A network, and changiong it to a class C subnet mask won't help either.

Class ranges

Class A 0 0.0.0.0 to 127.255.255.255
subnet mask 255.0.0.0

Class B 128.0.0.0 to 191.255.255.255
subnet mask 255.255.0.0

Class C 192.0.0.0 to 223.255.255.255
subnet mask255.255.255.0

Class D (multicast) 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255
subnet mask not defined

Class E (reserved) 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255
subnet mask not defined

 

What do you mean by won't be able to do much with that combination of subnet and network?

 

There's no DHCP -so IP addresses have to be set manually.

The IP address for the first client is 10.1.17.1. In addition, the Default Gateway is 10.1.17.1 and the DNS is 10.1.17.1

These are all class A addresses therefore a Class A subnet mask should be used, not a class B or C.

Qs

 

Using a class B subnet makes his network address 10.1.0.0 with host range 10.1.0.1-10.1.255.255

no?

 

No. The 'network address' (host IP address) would remain the same - 10.1.17.1

No. The host range would be 10.1.0.1 - 10.1.255.254 (as 10.1.255.255 is the broadcast address for the subnet! )

The networking adapters are outside of the available range allowed. If the subnet mask was set to a class A then everything would be fine. By using a class B it's just complicating matters.

Qs

 

So what your saying is that there isn't actually a problem with the ip addressing though?

the 255 was a typo - and by 'network address' i wasn't referring to the host address.

 

I'm no VMware expert but here's the basic principle (please correct me if I'm wrong):-

• You combine (or bridge) a current network adapter connected to your computer to a 'virtual' adapter inside the VM.
  
  
• Virtual networks are then set up against these 'virtual' adapters.
  
  
• These virtual networks are what your virtual hosts are created on.
  
  
• If you specify an incorrect subnet mask when configuring the hosts (or you set up the virtual network to be restricted to a specific, incorrect subnet) then they won't be able to see the adapter, therefore won't be able to see the network, and therefore it doesn't work.

Side note - There's nothing wrong with the basic IP addressing - you can use a class B subnet for class A hosts if you like; it'll just restrict the amount of available host IPs.

It's good practice to keep it simple though, and having a class A subnet would be the best option here.

Qs

 

I was just questioning this as a previous post said that using a class b mask with class a network wouldn't let you "do much"

using that ip addressing however he has 65000+ host addresses in that subnet, more than enough i would of thought.

 

Yep - 65536 to be precise (including broadcast and network addresses)

Nugget was probably referring to the problem at hand though, and not giving out incorrect generic information.

Qs

 

sorry dudes gotta back the guy up here

the 'network address' and the 'node address' are seperated by the subnet mask

whilst the first octet 10 (thats decimal not binary) is indeed a class A address range
you can use a /16 or /24 mask, hell even a random one if you like

this is part of a technology called Classless Inter-domain Routing (CIDR) and works with all but the most archaic technology, the specific tech in play is Variable Length Subnet Mask, back in the old days the protocols checked the first few binary bits and made an assumption as to the subnet mask, most new technologies don't do that, they actuall check the subnet to do the math themselves

in this example the 'network' part of the address would be
10.1

the 'node' part of the address would be
17.1
and
17.2

this is perfectly acceptable

I'd say it could be a problem with the Fusion networking

you have mentioned Fusion then mentioned 'Parallels Host only' setting, this confuses me
I have just rebuilt my mac and dont have fusion on it yet, let me get it up and maybe I can be of more use

 

you need not apologise lol

 

As far as I can tell it's what Fusion calls the virtual network adapters that it installs. I am running OSX leopard client in Fusion using a hack so it isn't officially something that is supported. I wouldn't have expected it to stop networking from working correctly though.