In terms of networking, are there any limitation to windows container over linux container like host network access from container

Question

Limitation of window container over Linux container in terms of networking like host network access from container I have done research on window container but could not find any relevant information on the limitation of window container over Linux container. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/container-networking/architecture

can anyone help?

Answer 1

I just checked the Docker documentation and the host network is not available on Windows. It's Linux only. With that said, the native NAT network should be enough for most scenarios on which you're trying to expose a port from the host and map that port to the container. Depending on the container orchestrator you're using, there are other options for Windows containers and they are all described here: https://cda.ms/4hz.

To your more generic question, there are other networks not available to Windows: macvlan and ipvlan. However, Windows still provides multiple options for networking that should address the majority of scenarios out there: (From the link above)

• NAT network driver
• Transparent network driver
• Overlay network driver
• L2bridge network driver
• L2tunnel network driver

Furthermore, there are a few networking features that are not supported:

• From Windows Server 2022 onwards, Windows containers attached to l2bridge networks support the IPv6 stack. However, Windows containers attached to NAT and overlay networks do not support communicating over the IPv6 stack.
• Encrypted container communication via IPsec.
• Host mode networking. (as mentioned above)
• Networking on virtualized Azure infrastructure via the transparent network driver.