Specifications

CHAPTER 7 Networking
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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.
If you select NAT, the virtual machine can use many standard TCP/IP protocols to
connect to other machines on the external network. For example, you can use HTTP
to browse Web sites, FTP to transfer files and Telnet to log on to other computers. In
the default configuration, computers on the external network cannot initiate
connections to the virtual machine. That means, for example, that the default
configuration does not let you use the virtual machine as a Web server to send Web
pages to computers on the external network.
If you make some other selection in the New Virtual Machine Wizard and later decide
you want to use NAT, you can make that change in the virtual machine settings editor
(VM > Settings). For details, see Changing the Networking Configuration on
page 238.
For a more thorough discussion of NAT, see Understanding NAT on page 269.