Connecting to the default NAT mode

Whenever you create a new virtual machine in VirtualBox, if you don't change the networking settings, your VM will be in NAT mode. And what is that? Well, NAT stands for Network Address Translation, which means your virtual machine acts as if it were behind a firewall. If you plan to use your virtual machine as a regular PC doing regular office or school chores such as word processing, Internet surfing, or even playing games, you won't have to change the default NAT mode.

But if you plan to use your virtual machine as a web or application server, you'll need to change to another networking mode because with the NAT mode, your virtual machine can see other computers connected through your host PC's LAN or the Internet, but the other computers won't be able to see your virtual machine.

Before delving into the NAT networking mode, let me introduce you to the network adapter types available in VirtualBox.

Exploring default network adapter types

VirtualBox includes...