Sun Microsystems VIRTUALBOX VERSION 3.1.0_BETA2 - Manual (Page 88)

6 Virtual networking
As briefly mentioned in chapter 3.8 , Network settings , page 54 , VirtualBox provides up
to eight virtual PCI Ethernet cards for each virtual machine. For each such card, you
can individually select
1. the hardware that will be virtualized as well as
2. the virtualization mode that the virtual card will be operating in with respect to
your physical networking hardware on the host.
Four of the network cards can be configured in the “Network” section of the settings
dialog in the graphical user interface of VirtualBox. You can configure all eight network
cards on the command line via VBoxManage modifyvm; see chapter
8.5 , VBoxManage
modifyvm , page 114 .
This chapter explains the various networking settings in more detail.
6.1 Virtual networking hardware
For each card, you can individually select what kind of hardware will be presented to
the virtual machine. VirtualBox can virtualize the following five types of networking
hardware:
• AMD PCNet PCI II;
• AMD PCNet FAST III (the default);
• Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop;
• Intel PRO/1000 T Server;
• Intel PRO/1000 MT Server.
The PCNet FAST III is the default because it is supported by nearly all operating
systems out of the box, as well as the GNU GRUB boot manager. As an exception,
the Intel PRO/1000 family adapters are chosen for some guest operating system types
that no longer ship with drivers for the PCNet card, such as Windows Vista; see chapter
4.3.5 , Windows Vista networking , page 64 for details. 1
1 Support for the Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop type was added with VirtualBox 1.6. The T Server variant
of the Intel PRO/1000 card was added with VirtualBox 1.6.2 because this one is recognized by Windows
XP guests without additional driver installation. The MT Server variant was added with VirtualBox 2.2
to facilitate OVF imports from other platforms.
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