NAT/DHCP network setting support like VMWare does.

[AndCycle]

VMWare scenario

• VMWare Virtual Network Default
  • provide DHCP support at VMnet1/VMnet8 host interface
  • provide NAT support at VMnet8

we already got NAT support at VirtualBox, why bother?

well, because VirtualBox provide Direct NAT attach,
host can't connect to guest by NAT interface like VMWare does,
under VMWare, you can direct connect to guest that connect to NAT because they actually connect to the host interface that host knows where they are.

I do webapp develop with some firewall setting on VM,
and move it to production environment lately,

I want my guest can connect to internet to grab some web info,
and I have to access it's wan interface to test it.

if I wanna do this for VirtualBox,
it's simple under *nix environment, but pretty sucks under win32,

I used to work under my laptop with winXP,
the only DHCP/NAT in it is ICS(Internet Connection Sharing),
it sucks, it have to assign which interface as wan and which as lan,
it has bad DHCP ip range default that you have to change it from registry,
it won't auto switch with default routing when I roaming between wire/wireless internet.

that's why I want to have VMWare like NAT host interface support,
I only have to bridge it with VirtualBox host interface once, then everything will works like a charm.

[AndCycle]

oops, VMWare installed DHCP/NAT service at Host to support this feature :X

[RedCrayon]

Also: enabling the host to see the NAT'ed virtual machine by IP address enables the host to share files (to a Solaris or Linux client) by NFS. I cannot use VirtualBox until such a feature is available; I use Fusion instead.

Note that, for Solaris clients, "folder sharing" isn't available, nor do I see that as a solution, if it's like the Fusion version: the files all appear to be owned by root, and there's no valid timestamp, etc. Nasty for developers.

The easiest solution is to allow the host to see the client IP, and set up specific NFS sharing, particularly from Solaris/Linux/OSX hosts to Solaris/Linux clients.

[zsd]

Bump?

This is also an issue in places where the DHCP server will not give an unknown machine (ethernet addr) an IP, thus making it painful to use bridged networking.

[Frank Mehnert]

This kind of NAT support was added in VBox 4.3.