missing vmnet8 from ifconfig on Fusion 12.1 and macOS Big Sur

[a_calo]

Hey everyone,

even after upgrading to Fusion 12.1 today (running on macOS Big Sur 11.0.1), I still can't see the vmnet8 entry when I run ifconfig. This used to be the case in Catalina with Fusion 11.x.

I tried running

sudo rm /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist && sudo killall -9 configd

then restarting Fusion and restarting the mac, bot nothing changed. I also tried this:

sudo pfctl -a com.apple.internet-sharing/shared_v4 -s nat 2>/dev/null
Password:
nat on en7 inet from 192.168.139.0/24 to any -> (en7:0) extfilter ei
nat on en0 inet from 192.168.139.0/24 to any -> (en0:0) extfilter ei
no nat on bridge100 inet from 192.168.139.1 to 192.168.139.0/24

which seems to indicate that something's indeed not right.

note: I'm usually connected to a VPN on the mac host, but I don't think that this is the issue, as I also tried this without being on the VPN.

Thanks for your input  

[nancyz]

Hi  ,

On Big Sur host, the virtual network adapter will be created when you powered on VM which is set to use NAT network, and it will be named as bridge10X instead of vmnet8.

[a_calo]

Thanks a lot   

[BertyVlad68]

This is a big deal! If every time I turn on a VM a virtual bridge10X interface is created, and this number X is chosen linearly following the VM startup sequence and not the name I assigned to the interface, if I have to sniff the traffic of a VM, for example with Wireshark, how should I know which interface I should use? Why did you make this choice?

[Iskander Nafikov]

The naming is done on the basis of Apple's vmnet framework, so VMWare did not make this choice. They just rely on the existing macOS virtual networking mechanism.