Trivia - Network Adapter Types in Virtual Box

Previously, when I first set up my new Kali Linux in Virtual Machine. I chose Bridged Adapter for the network setting. However, I got an error when I tried to ping google.com.
ping: google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

Changing the connection to NAT fixes it. This is due to my VM configuration, which gets internet access by sharing the host’s network connection (my VM can only communicate with the host machine, not the Internet). Bridged mode failed because when my VM tried to get an IP from the same network as my host machine, the DHCP wasn’t available or blocked by the router, so it didn’t work.

Therefore, to learn more about these different network adapter types, I wrote this page, so that I can review it whenever I want (and maybe you too! :D)

1.     NAT (Network Address Translation)
This is the default setting. The VM gets a private IP and the network goes through the host machine to the VM. Therefore, other devices can not communicate with the VM directly, but the VM can access the internet without hassle.

2.     Bridged Adapter
The VM acts like a whole computer and is connected to the same network as the host machine. The VM can get an IP address from the network and other devices can communicate with the VM directly.
 
3.     Internal Network
The VM can only communicate with other VMs that have the same Internal Network name, so there is no internal access and the VM can not communicate with the host.
 
4.     Host-only Adapter
The VM can only communicate with the host machine, but not with the internet (no internet access).
 
5.     Generic Driver
The VM uses external drivers for network communication, but this practice is uncommon.
 
6.     NAT Network
Basically, a network of NAT. Multiple VMs can communicate with each other and each VM shares the host’s internet connection.
 
7.     Cloud Network
Connection between a local VM to a subnet on a remote cloud service.
 
And that’s all for the type of networking adapters in Virtual Box. For us, NAT is sufficient for now because we usually only need to browse the Internet, download files, and so on. So, access to the Internet is our priority.

That’s all for this page. Thank you for reading!


References: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html