Windows 10, Hyper-V and Wireless - a new way to make this all work

Anyone who has used Hyper-V on a laptop is familiar with the pain of configuring Hyper-V virtual networking with wifi networking.  In fact, I have written multiple blogs about this over the years.  Well, in recent builds of Windows 10 (build 14295 or later) there is a new option.  This is currently a bit hidden (no GUI, and some rather finicky PowerShell) but you can now setup virtual switches for virtual machines that use NAT.

This means that your virtual machines can use a private IP address and still access Internet resources.

More importantly - this is approach is very compatible with wireless network adapters.  You can read all about how to set this up here:  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyperv_on_windows/user_guide/setup_nat_network

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2016
  Handy indeed. I have used many techniques, including having one VM that is a complete "Gateway" (this also has some advantages), but on smaller devices [like my Surface II Pro] the overhead was significant.
• Anonymous
  May 14, 2016
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  May 15, 2016
  I followed the instructions in the blog. I'm on the latest slow ring build #14295. After creating the NAT network and assigning my VM to the switch associated ith it, the VM was being assigned a 169.* address rather than an address inside of my 192.168.2.0/24 space. It was suggested to me that I may need to have a dedicated DHCP server in that network or just assign static IPs. Is that correct?
• Anonymous
  May 29, 2016
  Hello there, simply became aware of your blog through Google, and located that it is really informative. I am going to be careful for brussels. I will be grateful if you happen to continue this in future. A lot of folks can be benefited from your writing. Cheers!|
• Anonymous
  August 06, 2016
  This was exactly what I needed! My wonky internet woes with my wireless router are now solved. Thank you so much for you content.
• Anonymous
  August 25, 2016
  I have configured NAT and it was working great, until the last few weeks. Now all of a sudden whenever I am on public Wi-Fi networks, it never works. The Wi-Fi on both my physical laptop and my corporate VM will bounce up and down and the only way to fix it is to shutdown my corporate VM and then I can use Wi-Fi again on my laptop. I don't understand why this is such an issue in Windows Hyper-V, never had this issue with VMware workstation, but I needed to use Hyper-V because I work with Microsoft Cloud solutions and needed to have Hyper-V on my laptop regardless. It is a bit frustrating because I cannot seem to find a fix for my now current issue, and without a fix will have to re-image my whole laptop to go back to a corporate image because I travel for work and cannot have a whole week go by where I cannot access my corporate information. Has anyone else run into this issue after setting up the NAT?
• Anonymous
  December 28, 2016
  NAT was way too complicated. Use an internal switch and share the connection from the Wi-Fi to it -- winner, winner:https://www.credera.com/blog/technology-insights/microsoft-solutions/using-your-windows-8-wireless-connection-inside-hyper-v/
• Anonymous
  January 21, 2017
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  February 22, 2017
  This is an unsatisfactory solution. NAT is basically evil, and something that I don't allow any staff to use in a VM, as it doesn't allow IT to reach into the VM to manage it remotely.When are we going to get a properly working VM technology with bridging, including wireless?Kurt
• Anonymous
  March 07, 2017
  I noticed, as soon as you ceated a new interface with "New-VMSwitch ..." the HyperV Manager doesn't complain anymore and lets you create a new vSwitch that works as expected.
• Anonymous
  September 04, 2017
  Hello Is it possible to create Hyper-V External Switch using Thunderbolt 3 Ethernet in W10?Thanks!
• Anonymous
  October 20, 2017
  The comment has been removed