Bridge network driver

A Docker bridge network has an IPv4 subnet and, optionally, an IPv6 subnet. Each container connected to the bridge network has a network interface with addresses in the network's subnets. By default, it:

• Allows unrestricted network access to containers in the network from the host, and from other containers connected to the same bridge network.
• Blocks access from containers in other networks and from outside the Docker host.
• Uses masquerading to give containers external network access. Devices on the host's external networks only see the IP address of the Docker host.
• Supports port publishing, where network traffic is forwarded between container ports and ports on host IP addresses. The published ports can be accessed from outside the Docker host, on its IP addresses.

In terms of Docker, a bridge network uses a software bridge which lets containers connected to the same bridge network communicate, while providing isolation from containers that aren't connected to that bridge network. By default, the Docker bridge driver automatically installs rules in the host machine so that containers connected to different bridge networks can only communicate with each other using published ports.

Bridge networks apply to containers running on the same Docker daemon host. For communication among containers running on different Docker daemon hosts, you can either manage routing at the OS level, or you can use an overlay network.

When you start Docker, a default bridge network (also called bridge) is created automatically, and newly-started containers connect to it unless otherwise specified. You can also create user-defined custom bridge networks. User-defined bridge networks are superior to the default bridge network.

Differences between user-defined bridges and the default bridge

• User-defined bridges provide automatic DNS resolution between containers.

  Containers on the default bridge network can only access each other by IP addresses, unless you use the --link option, which is considered legacy. On a user-defined bridge network, containers can resolve each other by name or alias.

  Imagine an application with a web front-end and a database back-end. If you call your containers web and db, the web container can connect to the db container at db, no matter which Docker host the application stack is running on.

  If you run the same application stack on the default bridge network, you need to manually create links between the containers (using the legacy --link flag). These links need to be created in both directions, so you can see this gets complex with more than two containers which need to communicate. Alternatively, you can manipulate the /etc/hosts files within the containers, but this creates problems that are difficult to debug.

• User-defined bridges provide better isolation.

  All containers without a --network specified, are attached to the default bridge network. This can be a risk, as unrelated stacks/services/containers are then able to communicate.

  Using a user-defined network provides a scoped network in which only containers attached to that network are able to communicate.

• Containers can be attached and detached from user-defined networks on the fly.

  During a container's lifetime, you can connect or disconnect it from user-defined networks on the fly. To remove a container from the default bridge network, you need to stop the container and recreate it with different network options.

• Each user-defined network creates a configurable bridge.

  If your containers use the default bridge network, you can configure it, but all the containers use the same settings, such as MTU and iptables rules. In addition, configuring the default bridge network happens outside of Docker itself, and requires a restart of Docker.

  User-defined bridge networks are created and configured using docker network create. If different groups of applications have different network requirements, you can configure each user-defined bridge separately, as you create it.

• Linked containers on the default bridge network share environment variables.

  Originally, the only way to share environment variables between two containers was to link them using the --link flag. This type of variable sharing isn't possible with user-defined networks. However, there are superior ways to share environment variables. A few ideas:

  • Multiple containers can mount a file or directory containing the shared information, using a Docker volume.

  • Multiple containers can be started together using docker-compose and the compose file can define the shared variables.

  • You can use swarm services instead of standalone containers, and take advantage of shared secrets and configs.

Containers connected to the same user-defined bridge network effectively expose all ports to each other. For a port to be accessible to containers or non-Docker hosts on different networks, that port must be published using the -p or --publish flag.

Options

The following table describes the driver-specific options that you can pass to --opt when creating a custom network using the bridge driver.

Some of these options are also available as flags to the dockerd CLI, and you can use them to configure the default docker0 bridge when starting the Docker daemon. The following table shows which options have equivalent flags in the dockerd CLI.

The Docker daemon supports a --bridge flag, which you can use to define your own docker0 bridge. Use this option if you want to run multiple daemon instances on the same host. For details, see Run multiple daemons.

Default host binding address

When no host address is given in port publishing options like -p 80 or -p 8080:80, the default is to make the container's port 80 available on all host addresses, IPv4 and IPv6.

The bridge network driver option com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4 can be used to modify the default address for published ports.

Despite the option's name, it is possible to specify an IPv6 address.

When the default binding address is an address assigned to a specific interface, the container's port will only be accessible via that address.

Setting the default binding address to :: means published ports will only be available on the host's IPv6 addresses. However, setting it to 0.0.0.0 means it will be available on the host's IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

To restrict a published port to IPv4 only, the address must be included in the container's publishing options. For example, -p 0.0.0.0:8080:80.

Manage a user-defined bridge

Use the docker network create command to create a user-defined bridge network.

$ docker network create my-net

You can specify the subnet, the IP address range, the gateway, and other options. See the docker network create reference or the output of docker network create --help for details.

Use the docker network rm command to remove a user-defined bridge network. If containers are currently connected to the network, disconnect them first.

$ docker network rm my-net

What's really happening?

When you create or remove a user-defined bridge or connect or disconnect a container from a user-defined bridge, Docker uses tools specific to the operating system to manage the underlying network infrastructure (such as adding or removing bridge devices or configuring iptables rules on Linux). These details should be considered implementation details. Let Docker manage your user-defined networks for you.

Connect a container to a user-defined bridge

When you create a new container, you can specify one or more --network flags. This example connects an Nginx container to the my-net network. It also publishes port 80 in the container to port 8080 on the Docker host, so external clients can access that port. Any other container connected to the my-net network has access to all ports on the my-nginx container, and vice versa.

$ docker create --name my-nginx \
  --network my-net \
  --publish 8080:80 \
  nginx:latest

To connect a running container to an existing user-defined bridge, use the docker network connect command. The following command connects an already-running my-nginx container to an already-existing my-net network:

$ docker network connect my-net my-nginx

Disconnect a container from a user-defined bridge

To disconnect a running container from a user-defined bridge, use the docker network disconnect command. The following command disconnects the my-nginx container from the my-net network.

$ docker network disconnect my-net my-nginx

Use IPv6 in a user-defined bridge network

When you create your network, you can specify the --ipv6 flag to enable IPv6.

$ docker network create --ipv6 --subnet 2001:db8:1234::/64 my-net

If you do not provide a --subnet option, a Unique Local Address (ULA) prefix will be chosen automatically.

IPv6-only bridge networks

To skip IPv4 address configuration on the bridge and in its containers, create the network with option --ipv4=false, and enable IPv6 using --ipv6.

$ docker network create --ipv6 --ipv4=false v6net

IPv4 address configuration cannot be disabled in the default bridge network.

Use the default bridge network

The default bridge network is considered a legacy detail of Docker and is not recommended for production use. Configuring it is a manual operation, and it has technical shortcomings.

Connect a container to the default bridge network

If you do not specify a network using the --network flag, and you do specify a network driver, your container is connected to the default bridge network by default. Containers connected to the default bridge network can communicate, but only by IP address, unless they're linked using the legacy --link flag.

Configure the default bridge network

To configure the default bridge network, you specify options in daemon.json. Here is an example daemon.json with several options specified. Only specify the settings you need to customize.

{
  "bip": "192.168.1.1/24",
  "fixed-cidr": "192.168.1.0/25",
  "mtu": 1500,
  "default-gateway": "192.168.1.254",
  "dns": ["10.20.1.2", "10.20.1.3"]
}

In this example:

• The bridge's address is "192.168.1.1/24" (from bip).
• The bridge network's subnet is "192.168.1.0/24" (from bip).
• Container addresses will be allocated from "192.168.1.0/25" (from fixed-cidr).

Use IPv6 with the default bridge network

IPv6 can be enabled for the default bridge using the following options in daemon.json, or their command line equivalents.

These three options only affect the default bridge, they are not used by user-defined networks. The addresses in below are examples from the IPv6 documentation range.

• Option ipv6 is required.
• Option bip6 is optional, it specifies the address of the default bridge, which will be used as the default gateway by containers. It also specifies the subnet for the bridge network.
• Option fixed-cidr-v6 is optional, it specifies the address range Docker may automatically allocate to containers.
  • The prefix should normally be /64 or shorter.
  • For experimentation on a local network, it is better to use a Unique Local Address (ULA) prefix (matching fd00::/8) than a Link Local prefix (matching fe80::/10).
• Option default-gateway-v6 is optional. If unspecified, the default is the first address in the fixed-cidr-v6 subnet.

{
  "ipv6": true,
  "bip6": "2001:db8::1111/64",
  "fixed-cidr-v6": "2001:db8::/64",
  "default-gateway-v6": "2001:db8:abcd::89"
}

If no bip6 is specified, fixed-cidr-v6 defines the subnet for the bridge network. If no bip6 or fixed-cidr-v6 is specified, a ULA prefix will be chosen.

Restart Docker for changes to take effect.

Connection limit for bridge networks

Due to limitations set by the Linux kernel, bridge networks become unstable and inter-container communications may break when 1000 containers or more connect to a single network.

For more information about this limitation, see moby/moby#44973.

Skip Bridge IP address configuration

The bridge is normally assigned the network's --gateway address, which is used as the default route from the bridge network to other networks.

The com.docker.network.bridge.inhibit_ipv4 option lets you create a network without the IPv4 gateway address being assigned to the bridge. This is useful if you want to configure the gateway IP address for the bridge manually. For instance if you add a physical interface to your bridge, and need it to have the gateway address.

With this configuration, north-south traffic (to and from the bridge network) won't work unless you've manually configured the gateway address on the bridge, or a device attached to it.

This option can only be used with user-defined bridge networks.

Usage examples

This section provides hands-on examples for working with bridge networks.

Use the default bridge network

This example shows how the default bridge network works. You start two alpine containers on the default bridge and test how they communicate.

Note

The default bridge network is not recommended for production. Use user-defined bridge networks instead.

1. List current networks:

   $ docker network ls
   
   NETWORK ID          NAME                DRIVER              SCOPE
   17e324f45964        bridge              bridge              local
   6ed54d316334        host                host                local
   7092879f2cc8        none                null                local
   

   The default bridge network is listed, along with host and none.

2. Start two alpine containers running ash. The -dit flags mean detached, interactive, and with a TTY. Since you haven't specified a --network flag, the containers connect to the default bridge network.

   $ docker run -dit --name alpine1 alpine ash
   $ docker run -dit --name alpine2 alpine ash
   

   Verify both containers are running:

   $ docker container ls
   
   CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
   602dbf1edc81        alpine              "ash"               4 seconds ago       Up 3 seconds                            alpine2
   da33b7aa74b0        alpine              "ash"               17 seconds ago      Up 16 seconds                           alpine1
   

3. Inspect the bridge network to see connected containers:

   $ docker network inspect bridge
   

   The output shows both containers connected, with their assigned IP addresses (172.17.0.2 for alpine1 and 172.17.0.3 for alpine2).

4. Connect to alpine1:

   $ docker attach alpine1
   
   / #
   

   Show the network interfaces for alpine1 from within the container:

   # ip addr show
   
   1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN qlen 1
       link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
       inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
       inet6 ::1/128 scope host
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
   27: eth0@if28: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP,M-DOWN> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP
       link/ether 02:42:ac:11:00:02 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
       inet 172.17.0.2/16 scope global eth0
          valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
   

   In this example, the eth0 interface has the IP address 172.17.0.2.

5. From within alpine1, verify you can connect to the internet:

   # ping -c 2 google.com
   
   PING google.com (172.217.3.174): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.217.3.174: seq=0 ttl=41 time=9.841 ms
   64 bytes from 172.217.3.174: seq=1 ttl=41 time=9.897 ms
   
   --- google.com ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 9.841/9.869/9.897 ms
   

6. Ping the second container by its IP address:

   # ping -c 2 172.17.0.3
   
   PING 172.17.0.3 (172.17.0.3): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.17.0.3: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.086 ms
   64 bytes from 172.17.0.3: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.094 ms
   
   --- 172.17.0.3 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.086/0.090/0.094 ms
   

   This succeeds. Now try pinging by container name:

   # ping -c 2 alpine2
   
   ping: bad address 'alpine2'
   

   On the default bridge network, containers can't resolve each other by name.

7. Detach from alpine1 without stopping it using CTRL+p CTRL+q.

8. Clean up: stop the containers and remove them.

   $ docker container stop alpine1 alpine2
   $ docker container rm alpine1 alpine2
   

   Stopped containers lose their IP addresses.

Use user-defined bridge networks

This example shows how user-defined bridge networks provide better isolation and automatic DNS resolution between containers.

1. Create the alpine-net network:

   $ docker network create --driver bridge alpine-net
   

2. List Docker's networks:

   $ docker network ls
   
   NETWORK ID          NAME                DRIVER              SCOPE
   e9261a8c9a19        alpine-net          bridge              local
   17e324f45964        bridge              bridge              local
   6ed54d316334        host                host                local
   7092879f2cc8        none                null                local
   

   Inspect the alpine-net network:

   $ docker network inspect alpine-net
   

   This shows the network's gateway (for example, 172.18.0.1) and that no containers are connected yet.

3. Create four containers. Three connect to alpine-net, and one connects to the default bridge. Then connect one container to both networks:

   $ docker run -dit --name alpine1 --network alpine-net alpine ash
   $ docker run -dit --name alpine2 --network alpine-net alpine ash
   $ docker run -dit --name alpine3 alpine ash
   $ docker run -dit --name alpine4 --network alpine-net alpine ash
   $ docker network connect bridge alpine4
   

   Verify all containers are running:

   $ docker container ls
   
   CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED              STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
   156849ccd902        alpine              "ash"               41 seconds ago       Up 41 seconds                           alpine4
   fa1340b8d83e        alpine              "ash"               51 seconds ago       Up 51 seconds                           alpine3
   a535d969081e        alpine              "ash"               About a minute ago   Up About a minute                       alpine2
   0a02c449a6e9        alpine              "ash"               About a minute ago   Up About a minute                       alpine1
   

4. Inspect both networks again to see which containers are connected:

   $ docker network inspect bridge
   

   Containers alpine3 and alpine4 are connected to the bridge network.

   $ docker network inspect alpine-net
   

   Containers alpine1, alpine2, and alpine4 are connected to alpine-net.

5. On user-defined networks, containers can resolve each other by name. Connect to alpine1 and test:

   Note

   Automatic service discovery only resolves custom container names, not default automatically generated names.

   $ docker container attach alpine1
   
   # ping -c 2 alpine2
   
   PING alpine2 (172.18.0.3): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.3: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.085 ms
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.3: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.090 ms
   
   --- alpine2 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.085/0.087/0.090 ms
   
   # ping -c 2 alpine4
   
   PING alpine4 (172.18.0.4): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.4: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.076 ms
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.4: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.091 ms
   
   --- alpine4 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.076/0.083/0.091 ms
   

6. From alpine1, you can't connect to alpine3 because it's on a different network:

   # ping -c 2 alpine3
   
   ping: bad address 'alpine3'
   

   You also can't connect by IP address. If alpine3's IP is 172.17.0.2:

   # ping -c 2 172.17.0.2
   
   PING 172.17.0.2 (172.17.0.2): 56 data bytes
   
   --- 172.17.0.2 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
   

   Detach from alpine1 using CTRL+p CTRL+q.

7. Since alpine4 is connected to both networks, it can reach all containers. However, you need to use alpine3's IP address:

   $ docker container attach alpine4
   
   # ping -c 2 alpine1
   
   PING alpine1 (172.18.0.2): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.2: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.074 ms
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.2: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.082 ms
   
   --- alpine1 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.074/0.078/0.082 ms
   
   # ping -c 2 alpine2
   
   PING alpine2 (172.18.0.3): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.3: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.075 ms
   64 bytes from 172.18.0.3: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.080 ms
   
   --- alpine2 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.075/0.077/0.080 ms
   
   # ping -c 2 alpine3
   ping: bad address 'alpine3'
   
   # ping -c 2 172.17.0.2
   
   PING 172.17.0.2 (172.17.0.2): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.17.0.2: seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.089 ms
   64 bytes from 172.17.0.2: seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.075 ms
   
   --- 172.17.0.2 ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 0.075/0.082/0.089 ms
   

8. Verify all containers can connect to the internet:

   # ping -c 2 google.com
   
   PING google.com (172.217.3.174): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 172.217.3.174: seq=0 ttl=41 time=9.778 ms
   64 bytes from 172.217.3.174: seq=1 ttl=41 time=9.634 ms
   
   --- google.com ping statistics ---
   2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
   round-trip min/avg/max = 9.634/9.706/9.778 ms
   

   Detach with CTRL+p CTRL+q and repeat for alpine3 and alpine1 if desired.

9. Clean up:

   $ docker container stop alpine1 alpine2 alpine3 alpine4
   $ docker container rm alpine1 alpine2 alpine3 alpine4
   $ docker network rm alpine-net
   

Next steps

• Learn about networking from the container's point of view
• Learn about overlay networks
• Learn about Macvlan networks