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JohnnyFromBF
Asked: 2011-09-20 05:13:52 +0800 CST

In NAT mode VirtualBox DHCP only has one IP to assign?

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When I set up two machines in VirtualBox via NAT mode each machine gets the same IP from the virtual DHCP server, why is that?? Makes no sense to me. Both have the Gateway 10.0.2.2 which is fine, but they also get the same IP 10.0.2.15.

According to the answers it seems to be correct, well I didn't expect something else.

But then what if I want to create a whole subnet for 4 hosts in a NAT environment?

BTW VMware Workstation does it, it has ONE large NAT for all hosts out of the box. One big advantage over VB

virtualization virtualbox nat ip virtual-machines

4 Answers

  1. That's correct because in NAT mode every virtual machine stays in a separated network.

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  2. I think you need to create an internal network, selecting internal network an then create a virtual machine with 2 nics one of which connects in nat mode and the other to the intnet (default name for internal network). This virtual machine will act as a router for your NATed network.

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  3. This is correct - see the VirtualBox NAT docs for details - basically every machine has an isolated connection to the NAT using the same IP address.

    If you want a NAT network more like a home router where you have devices with different addresses then use the NAT Network virtual adapter instead.

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  4. From the Vbox official manual ,there is a paragraph like this:

    A virtual machine with NAT enabled acts much like a real computer that connects to the Internet through a router. The router, in this case, is the Oracle VM VirtualBox networking engine, which maps traffic from and to the virtual machine transparently. In Oracle VM VirtualBox this router is placed between each virtual machine and the host. This separation maximizes security since by default virtual machines cannot talk to each other.

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