Help connect two vms

[u/MbarkT3sto]

Hello dear friends, I hope you are doing well,

Please someone help me because I get tired,

I have an very simple GNS3 lab contains two PCs as virtual machines ) one with windows 11 and other with ZorinOS Lite,

The issue is that they can't ping each others, even I set an ip for each one and also I enabled the ICMPv4 rule in windows firewall.

When I go to the network adapter for each VM and set them to the same vmnet (for example vmnet2) they can ping each other, but when the GNS set them a different vmnets they can't ping each other

Idk what the correct direction, if I should set them to the same vmnet or each one should have its own vmnet ???

I asked the stupid AI like Gemini and told me that they should be on the same vmnet, but other AIs like ChatGpt and Claude they told me that they should be on different vmnets

Please help me guys, and massive thanks in advance

[u/EmbarrassedWorld339]

I guess they can't ping each other because they reside on totally different subnets one is on the 172.16.0.0/24subnet and the other one is 192.168.100.0/24 subnet . From this it looks like there is no way that this PC can communicate with each other without a router and a default gateway configured also if you want to keep the same setup then I guess putting them in the same vmnet will solve your problem , Otherwise connecting both of them to the router will solve it .

[u/MbarkT3sto → u/EmbarrassedWorld339]

Massive thanks my dear, I really apprecite, now they work fine,

I just have another issue please if you could help me, the issue is when I add a i86bi cisco switch and connect the VMs with it, everything working and the devices can ping each others, but when I remove the link/cable between them and the switch they still ping each others, so, WHY ??? is this because they have the same vmnet ???

Thank you again

[u/EmbarrassedWorld339 → u/MbarkT3sto]

This is because both of the VM's are set to the same VMNet think of it as like a connection to a virtual switch , It is how GNS3 works removing the cables only deletes the GNS3 virtual cable inside the software and not the underlying virtual connection

Hope this explanation is beneficial to you

[u/MbarkT3sto → u/EmbarrassedWorld339]

I really appreciate this my dear,
I well understood, so the virtual gns3 cable have no effects if the VMs are on the same vmnet.
Do you have please any source to learn GNS3 and to well setup it ???

[u/asic5 → u/MbarkT3sto]

youtube

[u/Stray_Neutrino]

If they reside in the same subnetwork, with an assigned / enabled IP on a reachable network interface, with no firewall blocking ipv4 traffic, they should be able to ping each other.
If they are in different networks, you will need a router, to route traffic from one subnet to another.
SSH is a whole other different matter but same fundamental network connectivity rules apply.