Windows network bridge not working for guests

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I recently bought a second Ethernet interface for my Windows 10 machine (TP-Link TG-3269 in particular, the first interface is the one built into my BIOSTAR TZ77B motherboard) in hopes of making a network bridge as follows (all Ethernet cables):

Router <=> Interface 1 <=> Interface 2 <=> Switch/other guests

Note that I'm not doing Router <=> Switch <=> Interface 1/other guests because Router <=> Interface 1 is gigabit, which I want to keep, while the switch is megabit.

I'm assuming that the network bridge makes the host act as a switch, i.e. DHCP, etc. managed by the router coming through Interface 1 should still be accessible to other guests via Interface 2. However, after following many guides and setting up the network bridge, the host works just fine (with a static IP) but all the guests I've tried can't communicate past Interface 2. For example, on an OS X guest, ifconfig shows the following (no IPv4 address):

en5: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
options=b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING>
ether 00:00:ba:60:05:3e 
inet6 fe80::877:a12:183c:eec3%en5 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x4 
nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>)
status: active

Monitoring the guest's network interface with Wireshark, I only see a ridiculous amount of packets arriving from Interface 2, but they're all low-level. Every once in a while there are packets of other types but none of them result in the guest getting an IP address, let alone connect to the Internet. Something similar happens to a Raspberry Pi guest.

What am I missing? Following this answer, I have already enabled promiscuous mode on both interfaces, but it hasn't changed anything. I haven't really tried Internet Connection Sharing but I would prefer to leave all my devices under the same network, and I think ICS creates a different network by default.

lipusal

Posted 2017-02-18T12:42:06.853

Reputation: 1

Your question not clear!! – Narzan Q. – 2017-02-18T14:41:34.127

@narzan Sorry, what isn't clear? I configured my Windows machine (host) to act as a network bridge. The host works normally but the guests don't have network access at all, they don't even get an IP address. The question is how can I make guests work properly? – lipusal – 2017-02-18T15:32:51.063

1what type of network sharing policy you have on your PC and other devices "private" or "public"? – Narzan Q. – 2017-02-18T15:46:28.107

What about (TCP/IPv4)!? did you enable that! you should enter a static IP for the new bridge connection too! – Narzan Q. – 2017-02-18T15:53:03.133

@narzan I gave the bridge a static IPv4 address and the host works. I did not give static IPs to guests because I assume DHCP from the router should work for the guests. When I did try a static IP and manually edit the routing table on a guest, it still wouldn't work (like I said, I think it gets stuck on Interface 2). As for the network policy, I'm not sure how to check. The network appears as "private network" on host, guests are not Windows so they don't have this setting. – lipusal – 2017-02-18T16:55:12.700

Answers

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The solution seemed to be manually installing the drivers for Interface 2, the ones Windows 10 had automatically installed weren't working properly. I installed mine from the installation CD, but as of writing they can also be downloaded here.

lipusal

Posted 2017-02-18T12:42:06.853

Reputation: 1