VMWare Workstation – DUP! packet issue resolved…sort of

VMWare 1 Minute

I was getting VERY frustrated with some networking issues with my virtual guests in VMW 15.5 (and prior), on Windows 10.  See below:

dup-packets.png

If you look, you’ll see that for every ping request I’m sending to my gateway (or ANY other IP address outside the Windows host), I’m getting FOUR RESPONSES. This also manifests itself in *very* slow downloads for packages or updates I’m installing on the VM’s.  And, it’s just wrong so it needed fixing.

Note that the standard Google answer to this issue is to stop and delete the Routing and Remote Access Service.  The first time this happened, this solved the problem! There were a ton of other ‘solutions’ out there but none really understood the problem. Windows was creating some sort of packet amplification. (When I have time I’m going to reinstall pcap and dig into this).

But then….months later….

It came back.  I hadn’t re-enabled routing and remote access. I hadn’t made any networking changes inside the host or on my network.   I HAD done some other stuff, such as enabling Windows Services for Linux and installing Ubuntu for bash scripting purposes.  You know…messing around. Some of this could’ve re-written the bindings and orders of networks/protocols/services etc., but if so, it wasn’t reflected anywhere in the basic or advanced network settings. VERY frustrating!

I deleted a TON of stuff I’d installed that I no longer needed (which had to be done anyway, but I was saving that for New Years’). I re-installed the VMware bridge protocol. I repaired VMware Workstation. I REMOVED and re-installed VMware Workstation.

**Here’s what finally RE-solved the problem:

  • I RE-ENABLED RRAS (!)
  • I went into the properties of “Incoming Connections” in Network Adapter Settings and UNCHECKED IPv4, leaving IPv6 checked. (I’m not sure if this matters, try it without this step first).
  • I RE-DISABLED RRAS (!)

And…here’s the result.

non-dup-packets.png

I can only surmise that the act of STOPPING RRAS does a config of the network stack where it doesn’t amplify packets. And, you can’t stop a service unless it’s already started, right?

Makes complete sense.

NOT.

But, all’s well that ends.

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Published by @gdekhayser

For over 25 years, I have been a technical and business process consultant to our clients, with a particular expertise focus in Enterprise Storage, Disaster Recovery, Holistic Data Management and IT Security. My varied background as a developer, DBA, network engineer, infrastructure architect, and CTO allow me to not only understand the need from the client's particular perspective, but to be able to make the client understand his/her solution options . I find great joy in developing comprehensive yet simple technical solutions to complex business requirements, and having clients tell me years later that the solutions I recommended still apply to their evolved needs. I am also proud to be a member of the NetApp A-Team @netappateam, a squad of elite technologists who use and advocate for NetApp's holistic storage solutions.

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6 thoughts on “VMWare Workstation – DUP! packet issue resolved…sort of”

  1. This solved it for me.
    The steps in detail are:

    Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Services and Applications | Services
    Routing and Remote Access Disabled
    Manual
    Start

    Network Connections | Incomming Connections | Properties | Networking
    [ ] IPv4 (was enabled)
    [/] IPv6 (was disabled)

    Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Services and Applications | Services
    Routing and Remote Access
    Stop
    Disabled

    Now I have no more ping duplicates to or from a VMWare virtual machine on Windows 10 host. Thank you!

    Note: I had to enable IPv6 because I got a configuration error unless at least one protocol was enabled.

    Can you suggest a way to promote this very simple fix (to a very stupid problem) so that others can benefit?.

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  2. Holy sh… i was going crazy with this.

    I did exactly the “usual” steps disabling RRAS and it worked for maybe an hour for me for some reason… i gave up after hours and hours of troubleshooting.

    I was now coming back ready to tackle this down and just found your post, your steps just did the trick… i’m amazed.

    Thank you so much.

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  4. OK, so I have a horrible hack, that is working for me. I found that what actually fixes this is the act of stopping RRAS. So here is what I did:
    – enable RRAS and set to autostart
    – create a local system task to run on startup that executes the command: net stop “Routing and Remote Access”

    Gross, but it seems to work.

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    1. Yes, but if you restart your VMWare Workstation services at any point, you need to re-do the RRAS fix.

      I was thinking, perhaps create an event log action that when it sees the VMW services come up, to issue a restart on RRAS. So, even more horrible than your hack. 😉

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