Using different networking modes

If you're setting up a VMware Workstation environment as a test environment, you need to configure the appropriate networking. In some cases, you want virtual machines to be connected directly to the physical network, just like if it was a normal machine. In other cases, you might not have the IP addresses available that are needed to connect each virtual machine directly to the physical network. And yet in other situations, you may have to set up a completely isolated VMware network. In the following sections, you'll learn how to accomplish these different scenarios in VMware Workstation. To match these different networking scenarios, VMware Workstation offers the following networking options:

• Bridged

• NAT

• Host-only

• Custom

You can find these options on the network settings of a selected virtual machine, as well as in the Network Preferences menu. There is also an option, Lan Segment, that allows you to define specific segments in your Local Area Network (LAN)...