Bridged vs NAT connections

 Bridged vs NAT connections

At some point, we might all have deployed virtual machines using different hypervisors, be it Virtual Box, VMWare Player, etc. on our computers.

 

After installing the VM, we are usually provided with two network connectivity options:

NAT or Bridged connection type.

 

Today we are going to look into the difference between the two network connection types.

Let understand it with a below network diagram:

Network Address Translation (NAT):

When a VM is connected with NAT connection and network traffic is going out, the NAT device/adapter translates the address of VM to that of the host machine before packets are forwarded to external network.

External world is not aware of the actual Virtual Machine, it will interface with Host machine. This is particularly useful when limited set of IP addresses are available in an organization.

 The reverse happens when packets are received for the VM from external network (or Internet). In this case NAT device translates the address of Host machine to that to VM ad packets are forwarded to it.

 

Bridged Network Connectivity:

Unlike NAT flow when using bridged networking, virtual machine have its own identity on the network.

For example, on a TCP/IP network, the virtual machine is assigned its own IP address and it is a full participant in the network. It can access other machines on the network and can be accessed by others on the network. It is similar to a physical computer on the network.