Container networking

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The type of network a container uses, whether it is a bridge, an overlay, a macvlan network, or a custom network plugin, is transparent from within the container. From the container’s point of view, it has a network interface with an IP address, a gateway, a routing table, DNS services, and other networking details (assuming the container is not using the none network driver). This topic is about networking concerns from the point of view of the container.

Published ports

By default, when you create or run a container using docker create or docker run, it does not publish any of its ports to the outside world. To make a port available to services outside of Docker, or to Docker containers which are not connected to the container’s network, use the --publish or -p flag. This creates a firewall rule which maps a container port to a port on the Docker host to the outside world. Here are some examples.

Flag value Description
-p 8080:80 Map TCP port 80 in the container to port 8080 on the Docker host.
-p 192.168.1.100:8080:80 Map TCP port 80 in the container to port 8080 on the Docker host for connections to host IP 192.168.1.100.
-p 8080:80/udp Map UDP port 80 in the container to port 8080 on the Docker host.
-p 8080:80/tcp -p 8080:80/udp Map TCP port 80 in the container to TCP port 8080 on the Docker host, and map UDP port 80 in the container to UDP port 8080 on the Docker host.

IP address and hostname

By default, the container is assigned an IP address for every Docker network it connects to. The IP address is assigned from the pool assigned to the network, so the Docker daemon effectively acts as a DHCP server for each container. Each network also has a default subnet mask and gateway.

When the container starts, it can only be connected to a single network, using --network. However, you can connect a running container to multiple networks using docker network connect. When you start a container using the --network flag, you can specify the IP address assigned to the container on that network using the --ip or --ip6 flags.

When you connect an existing container to a different network using docker network connect, you can use the --ip or --ip6 flags on that command to specify the container’s IP address on the additional network.

In the same way, a container’s hostname defaults to be the container’s ID in Docker. You can override the hostname using --hostname. When connecting to an existing network using docker network connect, you can use the --alias flag to specify an additional network alias for the container on that network.

DNS services

By default, a container inherits the DNS settings of the host, as defined in the /etc/resolv.conf configuration file. Containers that use the default bridge network get a copy of this file, whereas containers that use a custom network use Docker’s embedded DNS server, which forwards external DNS lookups to the DNS servers configured on the host.

Custom hosts defined in /etc/hosts are not inherited. To pass additional hosts into your container, refer to add entries to container hosts file in the docker run reference documentation. You can override these settings on a per-container basis.

Flag Description
--dns The IP address of a DNS server. To specify multiple DNS servers, use multiple --dns flags. If the container cannot reach any of the IP addresses you specify, Google’s public DNS server 8.8.8.8 is added, so that your container can resolve internet domains.
--dns-search A DNS search domain to search non-fully-qualified hostnames. To specify multiple DNS search prefixes, use multiple --dns-search flags.
--dns-opt A key-value pair representing a DNS option and its value. See your operating system’s documentation for resolv.conf for valid options.
--hostname The hostname a container uses for itself. Defaults to the container’s ID if not specified.

Proxy server

If your container needs to use a proxy server, see Use a proxy server.

networking, container, standalone