Bridge vs Host Networking

This article concerns low-level networking configurations available on Rivet Open Source & Enterprise. It's incredibly uncommon to require host networking in your game.

Bridge Networking

Creates a virtual, isolated network for each container. This is the default networking mode and should work for almost every use case.

Bridge networking allows multiple containers to run on the same server with an isolated network namespace. All traffic to ports in bridge networking are proxied through Game Guard to mitigate DDoS attacks & provide TLS certificates.

Host Networking

Shares the host's network namespace with the container, allowing the container to have the same network interfaces as the host and bind to any port on the host.

Host networking lets you specify matchmaker.docker.ports.<port>.port_range in rivet.yaml. This is useful in situations where you need a flexible networking configuration. Note that these port ranges can overlap with other containers on the same machine; it's up to the developer to ensure they don't reserve conflicting ports.

Ports 26000-32000 are accessible by WAN. Ports 20000-25999 are only accessible by Game Guard.

Host networking is only available in Rivet Open Source & Enterprise.