What is the ip address used to communicate 2 docker containers?

Question

I have 2 docker containers and they are connected using docker network. I run the following command twice.

docker network connect [network id] [container id]

The first container need to communicate with the second container by HTTP.

I set the ip to 172.17.0.1, but look like the ip is wrong.

I believe this is a common question for those experience docker users.

Can anyone help me?

Regards, Jimmy

Answer 1

It might be the case that the container didn't connect to the network. For checking that you can inspect the network to which the containers are connected so that they can communicate. Use the command docker network inspect network_name

If the network is default network bridge you can see the following o/p before the container are attached to it:

[
   {
       "Name": "bridge",
       "Id": "f7ab26d71dbd6f557852c7156ae0574bbf62c42f539b50c8ebde0f728a253b6f",
       "Scope": "local",
       "Driver": "bridge",
       "IPAM": {
           "Driver": "default",
           "Config": [
               {
                   "Subnet": "172.17.0.1/16",
                   "Gateway": "172.17.0.1"
               }
           ]
       },
       "Containers": {},
       "Options": {
           "com.docker.network.bridge.default_bridge": "true",
           "com.docker.network.bridge.enable_icc": "true",
           "com.docker.network.bridge.enable_ip_masquerade": "true",
           "com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4": "0.0.0.0",
           "com.docker.network.bridge.name": "docker0",
           "com.docker.network.driver.mtu": "9001"
       },
       "Labels": {}
   }
]

And once two containers are attached then the o/p will be as shown below:

{[
    {
        "Name": "bridge",
        "Id": "f7ab26d71dbd6f557852c7156ae0574bbf62c42f539b50c8ebde0f728a253b6f",
        "Scope": "local",
        "Driver": "bridge",
        "IPAM": {
            "Driver": "default",
            "Config": [
                {
                    "Subnet": "172.17.0.1/16",
                    "Gateway": "172.17.0.1"
                }
            ]
        },
        "Containers": {
            "3386a527aa08b37ea9232cbcace2d2458d49f44bb05a6b775fba7ddd40d8f92c": {
                "EndpointID": "647c12443e91faf0fd508b6edfe59c30b642abb60dfab890b4bdccee38750bc1",
                "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:11:00:02",
                "IPv4Address": "172.17.0.2/16",
                "IPv6Address": ""
            },
            "94447ca479852d29aeddca75c28f7104df3c3196d7b6d83061879e339946805c": {
                "EndpointID": "b047d090f446ac49747d3c37d63e4307be745876db7f0ceef7b311cbba615f48",
                "MacAddress": "02:42:ac:11:00:03",
                "IPv4Address": "172.17.0.3/16",
                "IPv6Address": ""
            }
        },
        "Options": {
            "com.docker.network.bridge.default_bridge": "true",
            "com.docker.network.bridge.enable_icc": "true",
            "com.docker.network.bridge.enable_ip_masquerade": "true",
            "com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4": "0.0.0.0",
            "com.docker.network.bridge.name": "docker0",
            "com.docker.network.driver.mtu": "9001"
        },
        "Labels": {}
    }
]

As you can see there is the ip-addresses of the two containers in the o/p.

Now you can attach to a container and try to ping the other container to see that they can communicate.

You can follow docker doc for complete details