NAT traffic can't go INTO guest?

[yyy]

I setup a ubuntu guest on my OSX laptop. traffic from guest outward to the world goes fine. but I can't establish a connection from host into guest.

"route" on the host shows that all traffic goes through the real network card on host. I guess supoosedly the virtualbox should setup the routing table correctly when NAT is chosen??

thanks
yang

[BillG]

That is how NAT is supposed to work. NAT is a one-way translation process. Private network guests can get out, public machines cannot get in.

If you wish to access a guest from the "public" side of NAT you need to use port forwarding. What exactly are you trying to do? Would bridged mode be a better choice?