How to connect to a docker container from outside the host same network Windows

Question

I ve created my first docker container  it s running a server using Go but I can t access it from outside the host computer  I ve just started with docker so I m a little lost here   So I have a very simple Go code that starts a server  I have built the docker image which installs Go and builds the code in a Linux base image  I m running the server on port 8080 so I expose that port to the host running the container like this   docker run -p 8080 8080 dockertest   That works and I get to access the server through docker s machine IP  the one that appears on the Docker Quickstart Terminal when initiated   the problem is I can t access the website I m hosting from outside the host  so if I try to open the same IP address on my phone it just gives me an error  This webpage is not available  ERR CONNECTION TIMED OUT    I ve also tried specifying the IP like this   docker run -p 192 168 0 157 8080 8080 dockertest   But when I do that I can access the website through neither the docker machine s IP nor the specified IP on the command line above  I m also not sure which IP I m supposed to write in that command I used my computer s IP  I ve also tried 127 0 0 1  localhost  but that gave me the same result  couldn t access the website through any IP whatsoever   I ve googled this problem and found many StackOverflow questions but neither helped me solve my issue  most of them were oriented to Linux or Mac so the solution didn t apply to my situation   Also  I can run the Go code on my computer and access the website from another device in the same network through my computer s IP  I don t understand why I can t access it when I m running it in the docker machine  it occurred to me that it may have something to do with IP forwarding or something but I m a complete noob in networking  I m mostly a web developer and have almost no experience in native

User · Answer

This is the most common issue faced by Windows users for running Docker Containers  IMO this is the  million dollar question on Docker     Rocco Smit  has rightly pointed out  inbound traffic for it was disabled by default on my host machine s firewall   in my case  my McAfee Anti Virus software  I added additional ports to be allowed for inbound traffic from other computers on the same Wifi LAN in the Firewall Settings of McAfee  then it was magic  I had struggled for more than a week browsing all over internet  SO  Docker documentations  Tutorials after Tutorials related to the Networking of Docker  and the many illustrations of  not supported on Windows  for  macvlan    ipvlan    user defined bridge  and even this same SO thread couple of times  I even started browsing google with  anybody using Docker in Production     yes I know Linux is more popular for Prod workloads compared to Windows servers  as I was not able to access  from my mobile in the same Home wifi  an nginx app deployed in Docker Container on Windows  After all  what good it is  if you cannot access the application  deployed on a Docker Container  from other computers   devices in the same LAN at-least  Ultimately in my case  the issue was just with a firewall blocking inbound traffic

User · Answer

After trying several things  this worked for me    use the --publish 0 0 0 0 8080 8080 docker flag set the virtualbox network mode to NAT  and don t use any port forwarding   With addresses other than 0 0 0 0 I had no success

User · Answer

Open Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager Select the VM used by Docker Click Settings -  Network Adapter 1 should  default   be  Attached to  NAT  Click Advanced -  Port Forwarding Add rule  Protocol TCP  Host Port 8080  Guest Port 8080  leave Host IP and Guest IP empty  Guest is your docker container and Host is your machine   You should now be able to browse to your container via localhost 8080 and your-internal-ip 8080

User · Answer

TL DR Check the network mode of your VirtualBox host - it should be bridged if you want the virtual machine  and the Docker container it s hosting  accessible on your local network     It sounds like your confusion lies in which host to connect to in order to access your application via HTTP  You haven t really spelled out what your configuration is - I m going to make some guesses  based on the fact that you ve got  Windows  and  VirtualBox  in your tags   I m guessing that you have Docker running on some flavour of Linux running in VirtualBox on a Windows host  I m going to label the IP addresses as follows   D   the IP address of the Docker container  L   the IP address of the Linux host running in VirtualBox  W   the IP address of the Windows host  When you run your Go application on your Windows host  you can connect to it with http   W 8080  from anywhere on your local network  This works because the Go application binds the port 8080 on the Windows machine and anybody who tries to access port 8080 at the IP address W will get connected   And here s where it becomes more complicated   VirtualBox  when it sets up a virtual machine  VM   can configure the network in one of several different modes  I don t remember what all the different options are  but the one you want is bridged  In this mode  VirtualBox connects the virtual machine to your local network as if it were a stand-alone machine on the network  just like any other machine that was plugged in to your network  In bridged mode  the virtual machine appears on your network like any other machine  Other modes set things up differently and the machine will not be visible on your network   So  assuming you set up networking correctly for the Linux host  bridged   the Linux host will have an IP address on your local network  something like 192 168 0 x  and you will be able to access your Docker container at http   L 8080    If the Linux host is set to some mode other than bridged  you might be able to access from the Windows host  but this is going to depend on exactly what mode it s in   EDIT - based on the comments below  it sounds very much like the situation I ve described above is correct   Let s back up a little  here s how Docker works on my computer  Ubuntu Linux    Imagine I run the same command you have  docker run -p 8080 8080 dockertest  What this does is start a new container based on the dockertest image and forward  connect  port 8080 on the Linux host  my PC  to port 8080 on the container  Docker sets up it s own internal networking  with its own set of IP addresses  to allow the Docker daemon to communicate and to allow containers to communicate with one another  So basically what you re doing with that -p 8080 8080 is connecting Docker s internal networking with the  external  network - ie  the host s network adapter - on a particular port   With me so far  OK  now let s take a step back and look at your system  Your machine is running Windows - Docker does not  currently  run on Windows  so the tool you re using has set up a Linux host in a VirtualBox virtual machine  When you do the docker run in your environment  exactly the same thing is happening - port 8080 on the Linux host is connected to port 8080 on the container  The big difference here is that your Windows host is not the Linux host on which the container is running  so there s another layer here and it s communication across this layer where you are running into problems   What you need is one of two things    to connect port 8080 on the VirtualBox VM to port 8080 on the Windows host  just like you connect the Docker container to the host port  to connect the VirtualBox VM directly to your local network with the bridged network mode I described above    If you go for the first option  you will be able to access the container at http   W 8080 where W is the IP address or hostname of the Windows host  If you opt for the second  you will be able to access the container at http   L 8080 where L is the IP address or hostname of the Linux VM   So that s all the higher-level explanation - now you need to figure out how to change the configuration of the VirtualBox VM  And here s where I can t really help you - I don t know what tool you re using to do all this on your Windows machine and I m not at all familiar with using Docker on Windows   If you can get to the VirtualBox configuration window  you can make the changes described below  There is also a command line client that will modify VMs  but I m not familiar with that   For bridged mode  and this really is the simplest choice   shut down your VM  click the  Settings  button at the top  and change the network mode to bridged  then restart the VM and you re good to go  The VM should pick up an IP address on your local network via DHCP and should be visible to other computers on the network at that IP address

User · Answer

TLDR  If you have Windows Firewall enabled  make sure that there is an exception for  vpnkit  on private networks   For my particular case  I discovered that Windows Firewall was blocking my connection when I tried visiting my container s published port from another machine on my local network  because disabling it made everything work   However  I didn t want to disable the firewall entirely just so I could access my container s service  This begged the question of which  app  was listening on behalf of my container s service  After finding another SO thread that taught me to use netstat -a -b to discover the apps behind the listening sockets on my machine  I learned that it was vpnkit exe  which already had an entry in my Windows Firewall settings  but  private networks  was disabled on it  and once I enabled it  I was able to visit my container s service from another machine without having to completely disable the firewall

User · Answer

I found that along with setting the -p port values  Docker for Windows uses vpnkit and inbound traffic for it was disabled by default on my host machine s firewall  After enabling the inbound TCP rules for vpnkit I was able to access my containers from other machines on the local network

[windows] How to connect to a docker container from outside the host (same network) [Windows]

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