I cannot be certain about this, but I believe a recent firmware update to the BT Smart Hub 2 broke bridged networking for virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs when using WiFi.
Bridged networking over WiFi for VMs has always been a bit flaky, but I had been successfully running several VMs on my M4 MacBook that were directly visible on the wider LAN using bridged mode. The last time this worked reliably for me was October 2025. When I tried again in December, it was broken.
At first I assumed the problem was on the Mac side. I had installed and removed various bits of software and OS updates, so I spent a long time trying different fixes there. Nothing worked. Everything I found while investigating pointed to this being a known limitation of bridged networking over WiFi, caused by a combination of DHCP behaviour, Apple’s networking constraints, and how some routers handle wireless bridging. The general conclusion seemed to be that there was no software fix.
After about a week of going round in circles, I finally looked at the router settings to see if there were any options to change how it handled DHCP and I noticed the Wireless Mode setting in the Wireless page for advanced settings. It was set to Mode 1. I switched it to Mode 2, which BT describes as:
“Mode2: Some devices can sometimes struggle to use the latest wireless features. If you have any devices that cannot get a good wireless connection, try using this mode. Selecting this mode may reduce wireless range and throughput but improve connectivity.”
As soon as I did this, bridged networking over WiFi started working again and my VMs were once more visible on the network.
So while I cannot prove the root cause, it looks very much like a Smart Hub 2 firmware change interacting badly with Apple Silicon bridged WiFi, and switching to Wireless Mode 2 appears to be a working fix.
