Networking on Pocket with USB, WTF?

[Tony Giaccone]

First the basics. I have a beagle pocket. It's connected to a Macbook Pro, running Sierra (10.12.6). I connect using a USB cable and after a short delay I get two entries in my networking pane. BeagleBone (192.168.7.1) and BeagleBone 2(192.168.6.1).  I have internet sharing turned off. 

At this point I am able to successfully ssh to my board and login.  I use:

$ssh deb...@beaglebone.local

debian@beaglebone:~$ route -n

Kernel IP routing table

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface

192.168.6.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.252 U     0      0        0 usb1

192.168.7.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.252 U     0      0        0 usb0

debian@beaglebone:~$ ifconfig

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536

        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0

        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>

        loop  txqueuelen 1  (Local Loopback)

        RX packets 480  bytes 34400 (33.5 KiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 480  bytes 34400 (33.5 KiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

usb0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.7.2  netmask 255.255.255.252  broadcast 192.168.7.3

        inet6 fe80::6264:5ff:fe45:1b63  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

        ether 60:64:05:45:1b:63  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

        RX packets 392  bytes 83626 (81.6 KiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 305  bytes 78511 (76.6 KiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

usb1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.6.2  netmask 255.255.255.252  broadcast 192.168.6.3

        inet6 fe80::6264:5ff:fe45:1b66  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

        ether 60:64:05:45:1b:66  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

        RX packets 146  bytes 38517 (37.6 KiB)

        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0

        TX packets 111  bytes 24192 (23.6 KiB)

        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

Any attempt to turn the mac's internet sharing on, causes the two networking entries BeagleBone (192.168.7.1) and BeagleBone 2(192.168.6.1) to stop woking. BeagleBone goes red and reports not connected, BeagleBone 2 stays green but the SSH connection freezes. Communications with the board dies.

The only solution at this point is to disconnect the board from the USB cable and turn off internet sharing and then reconnect the board on USB.