[Cialug] Which network adapter?

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 8:44 AM, Daniel A. Ramaley
<daniel.ramaley at drake.edu> wrote:
> Has anyone played with VirtualBox much? I have it on my main Linux box
> at home and it seems to work fairly well. It can emulate 4 different
> network adapters:
>
> PCnet-FAST II (Am79C970A)
> PCnet-FAST III (Am79C973)
> Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM)
> Intel PRO/1000 T Server (82543GC)
>
> "PCnet-FAST III" is the default, but i'm wondering which is the best
> choice. That probably depends on the guest OS, which in my case could
> be either Linux (usually Debian or Ubuntu) or Windows (XP SP3). Are any
> of these particularly better or worse for either Linux or Windows
> guests?
>

I use PCnet-FAST III for both Windows and Ubuntu guests running in an
Ubuntu host and have zero problems.

Tangentially, I love vbox and have come to depend on it for my daily
activities (mostly for running a server OS as a guest). I use a laptop
and wifi which limits some of the guest's capabilities. Specifically,
it means I have to use NAT which means my guest is 100% inaccessible
from the host and the host's network, which kind of defeats the
purpose of running a server OS in a guest. To overcome this I had to
use vbox's port forwarding capabilities which are documented but not
the easiest thing to learn or find. Therefore to save others the work
I documented my steps here for anyone who's interested:

http://www.bearfruit.org/blog/2008/09/18/running-a-virtual-server-using-virtual-box-nat-and-a-wifi-network-connection

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode