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<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="security-networking">
  <title>Networking</title>
  
  <body>
    <p> The default networking mode for VMs is NAT which means that the VM acts like a computer
      behind a router, see <xref href="network_nat.dita">Network Address Translation (NAT)</xref>.
      The guest is part of a private subnet belonging to this VM and the guest IP is not visible
      from the outside. This networking mode works without any additional setup and is sufficient
      for many purposes. Remember that NAT allows access to the host operating system's loopback
      interface. </p>
    <p>
          If bridged networking is used, the VM acts like a computer
          inside the same network as the host, see
          <xref href="network_bridged.dita">Bridged Networking</xref>. In this case, the guest has
          the same network access as the host and a firewall might be
          necessary to protect other computers on the subnet from a
          potential malicious guest as well as to protect the guest from
          a direct access from other computers. In some cases it is
          worth considering using a forwarding rule for a specific port
          in NAT mode instead of using bridged networking.
        </p>
    <p>
          Some setups do not require a VM to be connected to the public
          network at all. Internal networking, see
          <xref href="network_internal.dita">Internal Networking</xref>, or host-only networking,
          see <xref href="network_hostonly.dita">Host-Only Networking</xref>, are often sufficient
          to connect VMs among each other or to connect VMs only with
          the host but not with the public network.
        </p>
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