VM software (including both Parallels and VMWare Fusion) typically gives you at least two configuration choices when setting up the virtual LAN adapter:
1. Shared
2. Bridged
Shared means that it runs essentially like the host computer (Mac OSX in this case), acts like a Router/Firewall. The address that you'll get on the Virtual (Guest) OS will be a private IP, and the Guest OS will generally only be accessible via other VMs running on the same host. This gives you outbound Internet access from the Guest, without having to mess with your real LAN/Firewall settings, but it segments the guest operating systems into their own "private network".
Bridged means, essentially, that the Guest becomes a full-fledged "member" of the same LAN that the Host machine is connected to. It'll get its own IP address on the same subnet as the Host, and will show up as a "real computer" on the LAN for all intents and purposes. However, not all network adapters and network configurations will play nice with this kind of setup. In particular, if you have to do anything "weird" to get online (like you might on WiFi at a hotel, with one of those web gateway page things), since the Guest OS is a completely separate network device, it is treated completely separately (you'll have to go through the landing page again, in the Hotel example). If you connect to a VPN on the Host OS, the secure VPN connection will not be available to the Guest OS and you'd need to separately connect to the VPN on the Guest (and you might not be able to connect twice with the same credentials, depending on your VPN setup). It also makes sharing files between the Host and Guest OS more complicated, simply because it relies on file sharing to be set up to work properly on both machines' firewalls (whereas the Shared method handles all of this for you).
Because of the additional complexity, Shared is almost always the default (certainly with VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop), but you can easily change it. Simply shut the Guest OS down, and then edit the configuration of the Network in the VM application to change the Network Adapter type from Shared to Bridged. When you boot back up, it'll get an address on your LAN (assuming you have a friendly DHCP server on your LAN). The network adapters (wireless and wired) in all remotely-modern Macs support bridged virtual adapters just fine, so that isn't a concern.
You want Bridged in order to use MC from within a Guest OS with full Media Network support. It needs its own "real" IP address on your LAN.
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Topic: IP address/Parallels Question (Read 2766 times)