Port Forwarding from OSX to Guest

First, I've scoured these forums for days trying to find the answer to this. I've read the docs. I've searched other Mac related web sites. I am not by any stretch a techno-illiterate user, though my experience is far greater with Windows than with Mac OSX at this point in time. I need step-by-step how to do the below.

I cannot use bbridged networking, as it does not work properly with wireless, which I have to use. Airport is unable to spoof a Mac Address for the Airport connection, so the router gets lost between trying to maintain connections for both machines. Please do not suggest bridged network with wireless...it doesn't work. I've tried.


The Mac OSX 10.4.9, MacBook 2.0GHZ machine needs to accept incoming traffic from the router sent to it and further forward that to the VM Vista machine running in Parallels.

The router is set to forward port 7011 to the MacBooks IP, and from what I can determine I need to use a command line program, ipfw, to make changes to OSX's built-in firewall, to tell it to forward ports to the VM. The VM needs to use Shared Networking, as the bridged networking option does not work with wireless.

What I need is exactly what settings to assign in Parallels, and how to use ipfw to direct a port at the VM.

I am running out of time to fight with this. Otherwise, I absolutely adore Parallels. This is a huge huge thorn in my side, and from the looks of some of the posts here, I'm not alone. I do not have an ethernet option most of the time, so I have to make this work with wireless.

Thanks so much in advance!

 

If you really must use ipfw port forwarding, then maybe you need to use IPNetRouterX as a GUI to control it. It costs money, but it does save an awful lot of messy reading in the man pages.

 

I'd certainly consider that if I needed to do this frequently, but as it is only one port that, once it is changed will stay open to the VM, it seems insane to pay $100 for a single port.

Thanks though.

Anyone else?

 

There's a demo, isn't tehre? Can't you just use that to establish the settings you want? Since it edits the ipfw config, I assume the changes would still be there after the demo expires.

 

Maybe for you... but its working fine for me.

 

Why don't you try to get it working... Set it to a different MAC address and see what happens. I've used it successfully for a few months now.

 

Oh, I've tried. The internet works, but the router still can't route traffic to the virtual machine, because the Mac Adress shows up the same for both the OSX and VM. Several places on these forums and the Parallels manual say that Airport cannot spoof a Mac Address. You can set it too, and WIndows will even report back the spoofed Mac Address in Control Panel, but the router will see the same address for both machines. It's just the nature of the beast. If there is a way to spoof a mac address with Airport, I'm all ears, but everything says you Scan't, and I've tried and confirmed that was true.

 

Set a different MAC address for Parallels in the Properties window.

 

This is likely a problem with your machine or configuration. I used "shared networking" with wireless all day, every day on my Macbook Pro. I tend to fluctuate from working at home on my linksys router to starbucks to my office a couple times a month, and never have problems connecting from any of those locations. This is pretty critical for me, because I do technical support for a windows only network, so I have to run Outlook and MS Office and all the windows support tools. I'm using build 3188. I've never messed with the Parallels mac address, just set the network adapter to "Default Adapter" and "Shared Networking."

 

Shared and Bridged networking are not the same thing. I have internet access on the VM, that's not the problem. It is inbound traffic that is the problem.

As I stated, I've already done that, it doesn't work with Airport and it is stated in multiple places that it does not. Airport cannot spoof a Mac address to your router. If you do this, the Mac address will be spoofed inside your VM OS, but not to your router.

 

That's just strange to me, as I find it works. But that aside...

I understand the distinction between Shared and Bridged Networking. I remember the OS X Server commands, but I don't think they work on OS X Client... I can dig up the client commands, but before I do, take a look at this article I found by googling. It might solve you issue. The IP you forward to is the VM's IP.

http://switch.richard5.net/2006/01/25/port-forwarding-on-my-mac-mini/

Cheers! Hope it helps!