I am running CentOS inside VMWare 4 (my main OS is Ubuntu 11.04). When I run tomcat in the VM at port 8080, I am able to access it from the browser via localhost:8080

For accessing it from outside the VM (i.e. in my Ubuntu), I noted the address Centos gave me when I typed ifconfig, and used that to access the tomcat from Ubuntu. The address was something like :

http://172.16.217.128/

Now, the problem is that I wish to access my Ubuntu machine, which is on LAN, through another computer connected to the LAN. Normally, if tomcat was running on my Ubuntu system (not in VM), then I would be able to access the tomcat server from another system through something like 192.168.10.34:8080 (where 34 is my computer's id). But addresses like 172... are not allowed, I think.

How can I access the tomcat server running on VM in a machine from another machine when both are in the same LAN ?

You are using 192.x and 172.x, which means you are on different LANs. How is your 'LAN' physically configured/set up?

172.x is the address my VM is giving me. My LAN address uses the 192.x scheme

I see. The best option that I could see is to configure the VM to be on the same network as your LAN, i.e. configure it with an address of 192.x.x.x