You can change the gateway IP address, configure port forwarding, and configure advanced networking settings for NAT networks.

Prerequisites

  • Determine whether you are going to use the host virtual network adapter. The host system uses VMware Network Adapter VMnet1 to connect to the host-only network and it uses VMware Network Adapter VMnet8 to connect to the NAT network.

  • On a Windows host, log in as an Administrator user. Only an Administrator user can change network settings in the virtual network editor.

  • On a Linux host, log in as root. You must enter the root password to use the virtual network editor.

Procedure

  1. Start the virtual network editor on the host system.

    Option

    Description

    Windows host

    Select Edit > Virtual Network Editor.

    Linux host

    Select Applications > System Tools > Virtual Network Editor. The menu path might be different for your version of Linux. You can also start the network editor from the command line by using the vmware-netcfg command.
  2. Select the NAT network, and click NAT Settings.

    By default, the NAT device is connected to the VMnet8 virtual switch. You can have only one NAT virtual network.

    Table 1. NAT Settings

    Setting

    Description

    Gateway IP

    The gateway IP address for the selected network.

    Port Forwarding

    Add a port for port forwarding. With port forwarding, incoming TCP or UDP requests are sent to a specific virtual machine on the virtual network that is served by the NAT device.

    Host port

    The number of the incoming TCP or UDP port. For example, incoming HTTP requests are usually on port 80.

    Virtual machine IP address

    The IP address of the virtual machine to which you want to forward the incoming requests.

    Virtual machine port

    The port number to use for requests on the specified virtual machine. It may be the standard port, such as 80 for HTTP, or a nonstandard port if software running in the virtual machine is configured to accept requests on a nonstandard port.

    Description

    (Optional) You can use this text box to identify the forwarded service, for example, HTTP.

    To change settings for an existing port, select its name and click Properties.

    Allow active FTP

    Allow only passive mode FTP over the NAT device.

    Allow any Organizationally Unique Identifier

    Select this setting if you change the organizationally unique identifier (OUI) portion of the MAC address for the virtual machine and subsequently cannot use NAT with the virtual machine.

    UDP timeout (in seconds)

    Select the number of minutes to keep the UDP mapping for the NAT.

    Config port

    Select the port to use to access status information about NAT.

    Important:

    Change this value only under the direction of VMware technical support.

    Enable IPv6

    Enable NAT to use an IPv6 address.

    IPv6 Prefix

    If IPv6 is enabled, enter the IPv6 prefix that the NAT device uses.

    DNS Settings

    (Windows hosts only) Configure the DNS servers for the virtual NAT device to use.

    Auto detect available DNS servers

    Select this option to detect the available DNS servers. To add a DNS server to the list, deselect this check box and enter the IP address of the preferred and alternate DNS servers in the Preferred DNS server text boxes.

    Policy

    If you have multiple DNS servers, select the strategy for choosing which server to send a request to. Order sends one DNS request at a time in order of the name. Rotate sends one DNS request at a time and rotates through the DNS servers. Burst sends to three servers and waits for the first server to respond.

    Timeout (sec)

    Select the number of seconds to keep trying if the NAT device cannot connect to the DNS server.

    Retries

    Select the number of retries.

    NetBios Settings

    (Windows hosts only) Select NBNS (NetBIOS Name Service) and NBDS (NetBIOS Datagram Service) timeouts and retry settings.