scottgus1 wrote:
Let me clarify that the "router" across which the VM might have to publish its name so the host and possibly LAN can access the VM by name is Virtualbox's NAT, to which the VM is connected, which behaves like a router.
Right. The way you mentioned publishing to the router made me think your idea was that the host would resolve the address by a DNS query to its external router.
In fact all that is needed in principle is that VBox would provide a hook to name server queries originating locally, and return the address assigned to a VM if the host name matches any of its guests.
It would be very nice if VBox provided this feature. Otherwise, the next best solution seems to be to assign a static address, through the command-line interface to the advanced features, and then, as you suggest (though it is very ugly) entering an item in the local hosts file.
Otherwise, I believe that NAT offers the appropriate isolation, as it prevents access initiated outside the local host, as long as port forwarding is not enabled.