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How to enable passthrough for USB Network Adapters claimed by ESXi CDCE Driver?

03.30.2023 by William Lam // 6 Comments

As part of vSphere 7.0, ESXi now ships with a USB CDCE (Communication Device Class Ethernet) driver which can benefit customers with SB network adapters that support the CDCE specification as shared in this blog post HERE. This can especially be useful for those running a VMware Homelab where the onboard network adapter may not be supported and using a CDCE USB network adapter would allow you to install ESXi.

When a CDCE-supported USB network adapter is connected to an ESXi host, it will automatically be claimed by the CDCE driver as shown in the screenshot below.


If you are planning to use the USB network adapter for VMkernel traffic, then there is no workflow change like any other physical network adapter. However, if you intend to passthrough the USB network adapter to a VM, then you may find that it is not working as expected.


The reason for this is that ESXi has already claimed the USB device, assuming you wish to use it for VMkernel traffic. To change the behavior for a particular CDCE-supported USB network adapter, we just need to apply a USB Quirk which tells ESXi to ignore this adapter.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab, vSphere 7.0, vSphere 8.0 Tags // cdce, ESXi 7.0, ESXi 8.0, usb network adapter

USB Network Adapters without using the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi

02.07.2022 by William Lam // 25 Comments

While browsing the (unofficial) VMware Reddit this morning and came across a thread where the OP was asking for a recommendation on USB network adapters that can be used with ESXi with their Intel NUC, which many replied with their recommendations and a pointer over to the USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling, which would be required if you are using one of the supported chipsets.

The community already covered all the basics and I did not have anything to add until I saw the following comment:

To my knowledge at least, there are zero drivers for USB network interfaces without using a fling.

Although this was certainly true a few years back, that the only way for ESXi to see a USB network adapter was to first install the USB Network Native Driver, this is technically no longer accurate due to some recent enhancements with ESXi that may not be very well known.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, Home Lab Tags // cdce, usb ethernet adapter, usb network adapter

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William Lam is a Senior Staff Solution Architect working in the VMware Cloud team within the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group (CIBG) at VMware. He focuses on Cloud Native, Automation, Integration and Operation for the VMware Cloud based Software Defined Datacenters (SDDC) across Private, Hybrid and Public Cloud

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