DOCKER(1)		      Docker User Manuals		     DOCKER(1)



NAME
       docker-network-create - Create a network



SYNOPSIS
       docker network create [OPTIONS] NETWORK



DESCRIPTION
       Creates a new network. The DRIVER accepts bridge or overlay which are
       the built-in network drivers. If you have installed a third party or
       your own custom network driver you can specify that DRIVER here also.
       If you don't specify the --driver option, the command automatically
       creates a bridge network for you.  When you install Docker Engine it
       creates a bridge network automatically. This network corresponds to the
       docker0 bridge that Engine has traditionally relied on. When you launch
       a new container with  docker run it automatically connects to this
       bridge network. You cannot remove this default bridge network, but you
       can create new ones using the network create command.

       $ docker network create -d bridge my-bridge-network


       Bridge networks are isolated networks on a single Engine installation.
       If you want to create a network that spans multiple Docker hosts each
       running an Engine, you must enable Swarm mode, and create an overlay
       network. To read more about overlay networks with Swarm mode, see "
       ⟨https://docs.docker.com/network/overlay/⟩.


       Once you have enabled swarm mode, you can create a swarm-scoped overlay
       network:

       $ docker network create --scope=swarm --attachable -d overlay my-multihost-network


       By default, swarm-scoped networks do not allow manually started
       containers to be attached. This restriction is added to prevent someone
       that has access to a non-manager node in the swarm cluster from running
       a container that is able to access the network stack of a swarm
       service.


       The --attachable option used in the example above disables this
       restriction, and allows for both swarm services and manually started
       containers to attach to the overlay network.


       Network names must be unique. The Docker daemon attempts to identify
       naming conflicts but this is not guaranteed. It is the user's
       responsibility to avoid name conflicts.


   Overlay network limitations
       You should create overlay networks with /24 blocks (the default), which
       limits you to 256 IP addresses, when you create networks using the
       default VIP-based endpoint-mode. This recommendation addresses
       limitations with swarm mode
       ⟨https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/30820⟩. If you need more than 256
       IP addresses, do not increase the IP block size. You can either use
       dnsrr endpoint mode with an external load balancer, or use multiple
       smaller overlay networks. See Configure service discovery
       ⟨https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/networking/#configure-service-discovery⟩
       for more information about different endpoint modes.


Connect containers
       When you start a container, use the --network flag to connect it to a
       network.	 This example adds the busybox container to the mynet network:

       $ docker run -itd --network=mynet busybox


       If you want to add a container to a network after the container is
       already running, use the docker network connect subcommand.


       You can connect multiple containers to the same network. Once
       connected, the containers can communicate using only another
       container's IP address or name.	For overlay networks or custom plugins
       that support multi-host connectivity, containers connected to the same
       multi-host network but launched from different Engines can also
       communicate in this way.


       You can disconnect a container from a network using the docker network
       disconnect command.


   Specify advanced options
       When you create a network, Engine creates a non-overlapping subnetwork
       for the network by default. This subnetwork is not a subdivision of an
       existing network.  It is purely for ip-addressing purposes. You can
       override this default and specify subnetwork values directly using the
       --subnet option. On a bridge network you can only create a single
       subnet:

       $ docker network create --driver=bridge --subnet=192.168.0.0/16 br0


       Additionally, you also specify the --gateway --ip-range and --aux-
       address options.

       $ docker network create \
	 --driver=bridge \
	 --subnet=172.28.0.0/16 \
	 --ip-range=172.28.5.0/24 \
	 --gateway=172.28.5.254 \
	 br0


       If you omit the --gateway flag the Engine selects one for you from
       inside a preferred pool. For overlay networks and for network driver
       plugins that support it you can create multiple subnetworks. This
       example uses two /25 subnet mask to adhere to the current guidance of
       not having more than 256 IPs in a single overlay network. Each of the
       subnetworks has 126 usable addresses.

       $ docker network create -d overlay \
	 --subnet=192.168.10.0/25 \
	 --subnet=192.168.20.0/25 \
	 --gateway=192.168.10.100 \
	 --gateway=192.168.20.100 \
	 --aux-address="my-router=192.168.10.5" --aux-address="my-switch=192.168.10.6" \
	 --aux-address="my-printer=192.168.20.5" --aux-address="my-nas=192.168.20.6" \
	 my-multihost-network


       Be sure that your subnetworks do not overlap. If they do, the network
       create fails and Engine returns an error.


   Bridge driver options
       When creating a custom network, the default network driver (i.e.
       bridge) has additional options that can be passed. The following are
       those options and the equivalent docker daemon flags used for docker0
       bridge:


       ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────┬────────────────────────────────┐
       │Option					       │ Equivalent │ Description		     │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.bridge.name		       │ -	    │ Bridge name to be used when    │
       │					       │	    │ creating the Linux bridge	     │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.bridge.enable_ip_masquerade │ --ip-masq  │ Enable IP masquerading	     │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.bridge.enable_icc	       │ --icc	    │ Enable or Disable Inter	     │
       │					       │	    │ Container Connectivity	     │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4    │ --ip	    │ Default IP when binding	     │
       │					       │	    │ container ports		     │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.driver.mtu		       │ --mtu	    │ Set the containers network MTU │
       ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────────────┤
       │com.docker.network.container_iface_prefix      │ -	    │ Set a custom prefix for	     │
       │					       │	    │ container interfaces	     │
       └───────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────┴────────────────────────────────┘

       The following arguments can be passed to docker network create for any
       network driver, again with their approximate equivalents to docker
       daemon.


       ┌───────────┬──────────────┬───────────────────────────┐
       │Argument   │ Equivalent	  │ Description		      │
       ├───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │--gateway  │ -		  │ IPv4 or IPv6 Gateway for  │
       │	   │		  │ the master subnet	      │
       ├───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │--ip-range │ --fixed-cidr │ Allocate IPs from a range │
       ├───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │--internal │ -		  │ Restrict external access  │
       │	   │		  │ to the network	      │
       ├───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │--ipv6	   │ --ipv6	  │ Enable IPv6 networking    │
       ├───────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────┤
       │--subnet   │ --bip	  │ Subnet for network	      │
       └───────────┴──────────────┴───────────────────────────┘

       For example, let's use -o or --opt options to specify an IP address
       binding when publishing ports:

       $ docker network create \
	   -o "com.docker.network.bridge.host_binding_ipv4"="172.19.0.1" \
	   simple-network


   Network internal mode
       By default, when you connect a container to an overlay network, Docker
       also connects a bridge network to it to provide external connectivity.
       If you want to create an externally isolated overlay network, you can
       specify the --internal option.


   Network ingress mode
       You can create the network which will be used to provide the routing-
       mesh in the swarm cluster. You do so by specifying --ingress when
       creating the network. Only one ingress network can be created at the
       time. The network can be removed only if no services depend on it. Any
       option available when creating an overlay network is also available
       when creating the ingress network, besides the --attachable option.

       $ docker network create -d overlay \
	 --subnet=10.11.0.0/16 \
	 --ingress \
	 --opt com.docker.network.driver.mtu=9216 \
	 --opt encrypted=true \
	 my-ingress-network


   Run services on predefined networks
       You can create services on the predefined docker networks bridge and
       host.

       $ docker service create --name my-service \
	 --network host \
	 --replicas 2 \
	 busybox top


   Swarm networks with local scope drivers
       You can create a swarm network with local scope network drivers. You do
       so by promoting the network scope to swarm during the creation of the
       network.	 You will then be able to use this network when creating
       services.

       $ docker network create -d bridge \
	 --scope swarm \
	 --attachable \
	 swarm-network


       For network drivers which provide connectivity across hosts (ex.
       macvlan), if node specific configurations are needed in order to plumb
       the network on each host, you will supply that configuration via a
       configuration only network.  When you create the swarm scoped network,
       you will then specify the name of the network which contains the
       configuration.

       node1$ docker network create --config-only --subnet 192.168.100.0/24 --gateway 192.168.100.115 mv-config
       node2$ docker network create --config-only --subnet 192.168.200.0/24 --gateway 192.168.200.202 mv-config
       node1$ docker network create -d macvlan --scope swarm --config-from mv-config --attachable swarm-network



OPTIONS
       --attachable[=false]	Enable manual container attachment


       --aux-address=map[]	Auxiliary IPv4 or IPv6 addresses used by
       Network driver


       --config-from=""	   The network from which to copy the configuration


       --config-only[=false]	Create a configuration only network


       -d, --driver="bridge"	Driver to manage the Network


       --gateway=[]   IPv4 or IPv6 Gateway for the master subnet


       --ingress[=false]   Create swarm routing-mesh network


       --internal[=false]  Restrict external access to the network


       --ip-range=[]  Allocate container ip from a sub-range


       --ipam-driver="default"	IP Address Management Driver


       --ipam-opt=map[]	   Set IPAM driver specific options


       --ipv4[=true]  Enable or disable IPv4 address assignment


       --ipv6[=false]	   Enable or disable IPv6 address assignment


       --label=	 Set metadata on a network


       -o, --opt=map[]	   Set driver specific options


       --scope=""     Control the network's scope


       --subnet=[]    Subnet in CIDR format that represents a network segment



SEE ALSO
       docker-network(1)

Docker Community		   Sep 2025			     DOCKER(1)