VMWare Server 2.0.2 Host OS is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Guest OS is Windows XP
I am using VMWare VMNet8, the NAT network. The VM guests can't see out to the network around the VM host.
Packet sniffing in the VM host shows that:
- SYNs are sent to Internet hosts
- SYN/ACKs are received from them
- no ACK is sent back to the host
- eventually the target Internet host times out the incomplete connection and issues RST.
Packet sniffing in the VM guest however shows only that:
- SYNs are sent to Internet hosts
- No SYN/ACKs are received
- No RSTs are received either
so I get connection timeouts.
VMNet8 (and VMNet1) are configured in a completely standard way.
Following a suggestion elsewhere I replaced vmnat.exe in the VM Host with the version from VM Player. No change.
I have another server running an earlier version of VMWare Server, 1.0.6 where exactly the same setup works perfectly. The configuations are identical apart from the NAT subnet numbers. Until I did the packet sniffing I was putting this down to an undiscovered configuration difference or an undiscovered firewall setting in the host but the sniffing makes it clear it's a lower level problem with that, possibly still in VMWare's NAT.
Is this a known problem? With a workaround? Or am I on the wrong track and should be looking elsewhere?
Note: for reasons external to this problem I need to use NAT, not bridging.