Hide linux host behind Windows guest

[rossg]

Hi, this is a complete newbie question. I haven't used virtualbox yet and am trying to find out whether virtualbox will do what I want before potentially wasting a lot of time.

I have an x86 PC that I want to run Ubuntu linux on, but need to connect to a network where most computers run Windows XP and the network administrators don't like stray linux machines. (No, I'm not trying to do anything illegal, just run an R&D project without getting tied up in red tape. Most of the time the linux machine will run disconnected from the network, but occasionally I want to connect to get data from other machines or software updates from the internet.)

The linux machine has two network interface cards. Can I configure a VM running Windows XP as the guest OS so that it has complete control of one of the NICs and so that any external process looking in from the LAN will only see a completely standard Windows XP machine? If so, some pointers to the right place in the documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[wswartzendruber]

Yeah what you want is called bridged networking. Look into that.

[rossg]

Many thanks. As long as I have a good search term I can probably get most of the way on my own.