The biggest issue with this approach was that it was too static. The links capability was commonly combined with the ambassador pattern to facilitate linking containers across hosts and reduce the brittleness of hard-coded links. Prior to having multi-host networking support and orchestration with Swarm, Docker began with single-host networking, facilitating network connectivity via links as a mechanism for allowing containers to discover each other via environment variables or /etc/hosts file entries, and transfer information between containers. Two modes of networking have come and all but disappeared already. The approach to networking has evolved as container technology advances. There are various ways in which container-to-container and container-to-host connectivity are provided. This article focuses primarily on a breakdown of current container networking types, including: Let’s review the more commonly available types of container networking. Which one is right for you depends on your application needs, performance requirements, workload placement (private or public cloud), etc.
Some focus on simplicity, while others on breadth of functionality or on being IPv6-friendly and multicast-capable.
Some types are container engine-agnostic, and others are locked into a specific vendor or engine. While many gravitate toward network overlays as a popular approach to addressing container networking across hosts, the functions and types of container networking vary greatly and are worth better understanding as you consider the right type for your environment. An organizer of technology meetups and conferences, a writer, author, speaker, he is active in the tech community. Advanced and emerging technologies have been a consistent focus through Calcote’s tenure at SolarWinds, Seagate, Cisco and Pelco.
Lee Calcote is an innovative thought leader, passionate about developer platforms and management software for clouds, containers, infrastructure and applications.