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VirtualBox Networking Modes

VirtualBox gives an option to select various types of networking modes for an adapter.


The simplest description for each mode is as follows:
  • NAT :VM can connect to internet but VM and Host can't talk to each other.   
  • Bridge Adapter : The VM acts like a separate machine connected on the same network as the host. It gets an IP from the same DHCP server as the Host. Host and the outside world can talk with the VM directly.
  • Host-only Adapter : VMs can communicate with each other and the Host but not outside.
  • Internal Network : VMs can communicate with each other. Host and outside world can't communicate with the VMs.
  • Not Attached : If you want to test pulling out the virtual Ethernet cable, you can set to this mode on a running VM.
  • Generic Driver : Can be used for two purposes:

    • UDP Tunnel
      This can be used to interconnect virtual machines running on different hosts directly, easily and transparently, over existing network infrastructure.
    •  VDE (Virtual Distributed Ethernet) networking
      This option can be used to connect to a Virtual Distributed Ethernet switch on a Linux or a FreeBSD host. At the moment this needs compiling VirtualBox from sources, as the Oracle packages do not include it.

References
  • https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html
  • http://catlingmindswipe.blogspot.in/2012/06/how-to-virtualbox-networking-part-one.html


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Comments

Ethernet Cables said…
This is extremely helpful info!! Very good work. Everything is very interesting to learn and easy to understood. Thank you for giving information.
September 27, 2017 at 11:34 AM
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