Docker Networking
A Docker container has its own networking namespace, isolated from the machine it is running on. Your computer has its own networking namespace, which is a shared set of IP routing tables. To view your networking namespace,
ifconfig
Likely you will see at least two interfaces
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 172.20.17.192 netmask 255.255.240.0 broadcast 172.20.31.255
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
The loopback interface, lo, enables communication within your computer. Notice the loopback interface has an IP address of 127.0.0.1 - if you serve a web app at this IP address, you can access that app by entering the IP address into your browser. lo is an internal IP address - only your computer can communicate on this interface. This computer uses the IP address 172.20.17.192 to communicate externally.
Docker namespaces
Docker containers have their own networking namespace. To view the networking namespace in a Docker container, use the following command and replace 123456 with your container ID
docker exec 123456 ifconfig
To run a Docker container on the host network, use the --net host flag
docker run --net host myapp