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VMware ACE Administrator’s Manual
If you use bridged networking, the virtual machine is a full participant in the network.
It has access to other machines on the network and can be contacted by other
machines on the network as if it were a physical computer on the network.
If you make some other selection in the New Virtual Machine Wizard and later decide
you want to use bridged networking, you can make that change in the virtual
machine settings editor (VM > Settings). For details, see Changing the Networking
Configuration on page 195.
Network Address Translation (NAT)
NAT gives a virtual machine access to network resources using the host computer’s IP address.
A network address translation connection is set up automatically if you follow the
Custom path in the New Virtual Machine Wizard and select Use network address
translation.
If you want to connect to the Internet or other TCP/IP network using the host
computer’s dial-up networking or broadband connection and you are not able to give
your virtual machine an IP address on the external network, NAT is often the easiest
way to give your virtual machine access to that network.
NAT also allows you to connect to a TCP/IP network using a Token Ring adapter on the
host computer.
If you use NAT, your virtual machine does not have its own IP address on the external
network. Instead, a separate private network is set up on the host computer. Your
virtual machine gets an address on that network from the VMware virtual DHCP
server. The VMware NAT device passes network data between one or more virtual
machines and the external network. It identifies incoming data packets intended for
each virtual machine and sends them to the correct destination.
Virtual machine
Virtual
Ethernet
adapter
Virtual Ethernet switch
(VMnet8)
NAT device
DHCP server
Network
Packet filter