access to VM from external source?

[MacNala]

I admit I am lacking a lot of knowledge and information about VBox and a whole lot of other things.
I run a Windows 7 Host with multiple VMs all Windows 7.
I can communicate with any of them to the internet with no problems but can any of them respond to a http request from the internet?

I use a cable provider who supplies a cable modem. I understand this implies a NAT connection.
I have connected a router to this cable modem and to it the main VBox host.
The VMs all connect to the Host using a Bridged Adapter.

Is it possible to connect to one of the VMs from another PC on the internet?

if so how?
WAN>cable modem>router>VBox Host>VM
WAN IP >192.168.0.1>192.168.1.1>192.168.1.x>192.168.1.y

[mpack]

If the VM is configured to use bridged networking then it appears on the same network on which the host does, and can do anything network-wise that the host can.

[AnrDaemon]

There's certain limitation to bridged networking, please consult with documentation.

[mpack]

That's a rather vague statement! What limitation are you referring to?

[AnrDaemon]

Do you REALLY want me to retype whole help page for you? Or you expect me to remember it literally? Or, may be, hitting F1 in network setup dialogue is an unbearable task for OP?
And yes, I can be rather rude, when people expect me to do their work for them.

[MacNala]

Hang on fellows. Don't fall out over such a trivial question.
I was correctly, I think, referred to the documentation to find the answer.
I think I was asking a much deeper question than either of you thought I was.

I think I need to read what the documentation says and then ask a more relevant question.

I think I need more in-depth knowledge of NAT transversal capabilities.

[AnrDaemon]

If serving HTTP requests (and TCP connections in general, such as SSH access) is all that is required, bridged connection would satisfy your needs. (And mpack's answer is also correct, guests will appear in the local network of your router, so you can port forward to them like they were real hardware attached to the wires.)
But from your original question it was not certain, if that's ALL capabilities you need from your guest, thus I referred to documentation, which explains some narrow details of different networking implementations in VirtualBox.

[scottgus1]

MacNala, to answer the question, can you access one of your guests from the internet, is Yes. "Bridged" network configuration is the easiest way to achieve this, as Mpack suggested. With Bridged, your guests get IP addresses in the same range as the host, in whatever range the DHCP server in your router or modem is serving.

But you should set up the internet-serving guest with a static IP address in the same range as your DHCP server hands out. You can then set up port forwarding in the router/modem to send your desired service requests to the correct guest. (We have this setup at work. Our SBS2003 guest is bridged to the server computer's network card, and the combined modem/router forwards internet-access ports 80 and 443 to the SBS2003 guest's IP address.)

One issue you may have to deal with is using the separate modem and router. I have that setup at home and cannot yet get a service to go through to the web on either hosts or guests, because of the modem just handling internet connection and the router being the DHCP server. I have been pondering the solution and I think this is what would have to be done:

Set up the modem as the DHCP server for the network, turn off the DHCP server in the router and make it act like a switch, and set the router with a fixed IP address in the range the modem wants to use. So the modem becomes the brains of the network, and the router merely serves as extra network jacks and/or wireless-link for the modem. Then do the port forwarding to your guests within the modem.

[mpack]

Do you REALLY want me to retype whole help page for you?

I don't recall asking for that. In my first post I said that a VM using bridged networking can do anything the host can, you followed that by contradicting me, saying that bridged networking had limitations. That's fine, I simply asked you to clarify what you meant. Just three or four words indicating what you were talking about should be enough, or a reference to a specific part of whatever documentation you're referring to.

And incidentally: please try to remain civil. Abuse is not taken lightly around here.