Running a VMware Player Virtual Machine to run a Driver Station

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by defied

If you use bridging, the field may authenticate the traffic packet based on MAC address, and if the VM interface MAC is encapsulated in the payload, but the Physical MAC's interface is registered as sending the packet, the field radio could reject/drop those packets. I think this is highly unlikely, as the field network last year was a simple configuration.

The same applies if you are using NAT'ting, except replace everywhere I said MAC with IP address. Because different organizations have produces all of these different items at a nearly free to FIRST level, I HIGHLY doubt this is integrated in to the Field.

I helped a team that had bridged their ethernet and wireless connections. They were not able to connect to FMS until they removed the bridge, even though all other settings were OK.

I don't think the field network configuration is as simple as you suspect. From the FMS whitepaper:

The FMS software (running on the FMS Server)
communicates with each Driver Station via the
managed switches in the Scorpion Case and Station
Control Cabinets. This communication employs
team-specific virtual local area networks (VLANs)
which serve to isolate each teams data traffic.
...
The FMS software configures the managed switches
and Access Point before each match to ensure the
data and communications for each team is kept
separate from others.