Understanding Networking in VirtualBox

Looking to better understand networking in VirtualBox? Oracle's Fat Bloke offers an extremely detailed primer:

Networking in VirtualBox is extremely powerful, but can also be a bit daunting, so here's a quick overview of the different ways you can setup networking in VirtualBox, with a few pointers as to which configurations should be used and when.
VirtualBox allows you to configure up to 8 virtual NICs (Network Interface Controllers) for each guest vm (although only 4 are exposed in the GUI) and for each of these NICs you can configure:

1. Which virtualized NIC-type is exposed to the Guest. Examples include:

• Intel PRO/1000 MT Server (82545EM), 

• AMD PCNet FAST III (Am79C973, the default) or 

• a Paravirtualized network adapter (virtio-net).

1. How the NIC operates with respect to your Host's physical networking. The main modes are:

• Network Address Translation (NAT)

• Bridged networking

• Internal networking

• Host-only networking

• NAT with Port-forwarding

You can read the rest over at the Fat Bloke's blog.