Table of Contents

More than 4 Network Cards in Virtualbox

Virtualbox supports up to eight network cards. If you look into the *.vbox you will see that there are already preconfigured but disabled. Unfortunately inside the VBox GUI we could only configure up to four. I will show how to get and configure the other.

You have to use VBoxManage to get the other network cards. After the option will always be the NIC Number count one to eight. Here I will use five and the name of the machine that will be configured is “network-test”.

Set Mode and enable NIC

When a Mode is set the NIC will be enabled.

  1. Set NIC five to Host-Only Mode and User vboxnet0 (Initially existing Host-Only Net)
    VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 hostonly
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --hostonlyadapter5 "vboxnet0"
  2. Set NIC five to Bridge eth1
    VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 bridged
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --bridgeadapter5 "eth1'
  3. Set NIC to NAT Mode
    VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 nat
  4. Use the internal VM net “test01”
    VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --nic5 intnet
VBoxManage modifyvm network-test --intnet5 "test01"

Configuring NIC

All Options

The help of VBoxManage contains much more options than I've showed

other options

other options 

                            [--nic<1-N> none|null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly|
                                        generic]
                            [--nictype<1-N> Am79C970A|Am79C973|
                                            82540EM|82543GC|82545EM|
                                            virtio]
                            [--cableconnected<1-N> on|off]
                            [--nictrace<1-N> on|off]
                            [--nictracefile<1-N> <filename>]
                            [--nicproperty<1-N> name=[value]]
                            [--nicspeed<1-N> <kbps>]
                            [--nicbootprio<1-N> <priority>]
                            [--nicpromisc<1-N> deny|allow-vms|allow-all]
                            [--nicbandwidthgroup<1-N> none|<name>]
                            [--bridgeadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>]
                            [--hostonlyadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>]
                            [--intnet<1-N> <network name>]
                            [--natnet<1-N> <network>|default]
                            [--nicgenericdrv<1-N> <driver>
                            [--natsettings<1-N> [<mtu>],[<socksnd>],
                                                [<sockrcv>],[<tcpsnd>],
                                                [<tcprcv>]]
                            [--natpf<1-N> [<rulename>],tcp|udp,[<hostip>],
                                          <hostport>,[<guestip>],<guestport>]
                            [--natpf<1-N> delete <rulename>]
                            [--nattftpprefix<1-N> <prefix>]
                            [--nattftpfile<1-N> <file>]
                            [--nattftpserver<1-N> <ip>]
                            [--natbindip<1-N> <ip>
                            [--natdnspassdomain<1-N> on|off]
                            [--natdnsproxy<1-N> on|off]
                            [--natdnshostresolver<1-N> on|off]
                            [--nataliasmode<1-N> default|[log],[proxyonly],
                                                         [sameports]]
                            [--macaddress<1-N> auto|<mac>]