Last Updated on February 1, 2025 by sandeeppote

When docker is installed it creates 3 networks. The default network is bridge.

To check the networks installed on host use following command-

docker network ls

To get the details of the network use inspect command

docker network inspect bridge

Now lets create a custom network for check the communication between the various containers

docker network create --driver=bridge --subnet=192.168.12.0/10 mycustomnetwork

Now lets create a container with the newly created network

docker container run -itd --net mycustomnetwork --name ubuntuone ubuntu

docker container run -itd --net mycustomnetwork --name ubuntutwo ubuntu

Here I have create 2 containers ubuntone and ubuntutwo

Inspect the containers to see the network details-

Lets ping the container e.g.- ubunttwo from ubuntuone-

docker exec -itd ubuntuone ping ubuntutwo

Error response from daemon: OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:380: starting container process caused: exec: "ping": executable file not found in $PATH: unknown

If you receive above error you have to update repository and install ping utility

Install ping utility by interactively connecting to container and running the bash command

docker exec -it ubuntuone bash
apt-get udpate
apt-get install inetutils-ping

Execute the same for other container i.e. ubuntutwo

Now try to ping from ubuntuone to unbuntutwo

Here you should see the container is able to conect another-

docker exec -it ubuntuone ping ubuntutwo

For existing running container, you can use following command to connect to the network

docker network connect <<network name>> <<container name>>

Or if you want to move the container out of the network use network disconnect command-

docker network disconnect <<network name>> <<container name>>

To remove network – user rm command

docker network rm <<network name>>

To remove all unused network use prun command-

Prune will not remove OOTB network and will only remove user defined networks.

docker network prune