Question regarding NIC configuration

Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH kurt.buff at gmail.com
Fri Jan 25 01:38:28 UTC 2019


All,

As I've reported before, I have a VM running in VMware Workstation on
my Win10 production laptop at work.

We use Ruckus WAPs for work in the Unleashed flavor, and they have a
weird quirk - DHCP requests made by VMs while connected to wireless
will not work[1].

Obviously, that presents a problem when off-premises, as DHCP is
required when away from work.

I'm looking for a quick/easy way to handle the transition from work to
not-work and back for the FreeBSD VM - I've got a nifty powershell
script for Windows, but that's really only for Windows.

Anyone have a thought or two they'd like to share for making it easier
to manage?

Currently I'm reduced to editing /etc/rc.conf and issuing "netif
restart". Does anyone have a better idea?

Thanks,

Kurt

[1] For those who care, the Unleashed Ruckus units seem to use a
Directed IP Broadcast for DHCP. Why this messes up DHCP for VMs but
not hosts running them, I don't know, but it's really annoying. I use
bridged mode for my VMs, per company policy (which I initiated,
because as the admin, I get to talk with all machines on my network).
I presume using NAT mode for the VMs wouldn't cause a problem, because
then the host would issue an IP address, rather than the network DHCP
server. FWIW, while troubleshooting this problem, I turned the
Directed IP Broadcast facility off, and all of the phones on the guest
network (which are served via the DHCP server on our firewall, rather
than our production DHCP servers) stopped getting addresses, causing
quite a bit of bleating, and I had to back out the change. I don't
know if the regular flavor of Ruckus units using a controller exhibit
different behavior. I also have no idea why turning off the Directed
IP Broadcast affected the units on the guest network, and not the
production wireless network, but as I had to back out the change less
than an hour after implementing it, perhaps there wasn't enough time
for the impact to make itself felt - the lease times on production vs.
guest are significantly different.


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