Fixing Guest Network Drops in VMware Fusion on a Mac

The guest OS network in VMware Fusion keeps dropping

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Symptoms

On VMware Fusion 8.5.4 under macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), the network of the guest OS in VMware Fusion occasionally gets disconnected

The guest OS is Windows10, and once the network drops,

  • changing to NAT or bridged does not help
  • restarting the network in Windows does not help
  • disconnecting the network adapter on the VMware side does not help

The solution

The simplest thing is to restart the Mac, but when the same symptom happens over and over while you are working, restarting every time is a hassle

So here is a solution on the command line

On the VMware host side on the Mac,

sudo /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmnet-cli --stop
sudo /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmnet-cli --start

After this, restart the network on the guest OS (Windows) side (disable the network adapter, then enable it again)

Points to note

In my environment (macOS High Sierra - Vmware Fusion 8.5.4) I cannot update VMware any further, which is how this symptom came about, but at the moment the latest version of VMware Fusion is 11.5.x, and there is a possibility that the problem has been fixed.

Addendum: the symptom also occurred in an environment with macOS (11.6) Big Sur and VmwareFusion 12.2.0

Reference article