Docker Network Throughput Calculator

Estimate achievable network throughput between containers on a Docker network.

About Docker Network Throughput Calculator

Container network throughput is limited by the host NIC speed minus Docker networking overhead (iptables, NAT, veth pairs). Formula: effective = hostNIC × (1 − overhead%). Per-flow bandwidth is shared across concurrent connections.

Formula

Effective Throughput

effective = hostNIC × (1 − overhead%) / concurrentFlows

hostNIC: Host NIC speed in Gbps
overhead%: Docker network overhead
concurrentFlows: Number of concurrent flows

Worked example

With the default values below, Docker Network Throughput Calculator returns Effective Throughput of 9.50. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Host NIC Speedaccepts 0.1–400 Gbps: 10 Gbps
Docker Network Overheadaccepts 0–50 %: 5 %
Concurrent Flowsaccepts 1–10,000 flows: 10 flows
MTUaccepts 68–9,000 bytes: 1,500 bytes

Results

Effective Throughput: 9.50 Gbps
Per-Flow Throughput: 118.8 MB/s
Per-Flow Throughput: 0.950 Gbps
TCP/IP Header Overhead: 2.7%

Step by step

1Effective throughput after Docker overhead= 9.50Gbps
2Per-flow throughput= 118.8MB/s

Assumptions and limits

The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
Figures are rounded for display to 3 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is container-to-container traffic on the same host faster?

Yes — traffic between containers on the same bridge network stays local (through the Linux bridge/veth pairs), never hitting the physical NIC, achieving near line-rate with minimal latency.

How does --net=host compare?

--net=host bypasses Docker networking entirely, giving containers direct host NIC access with zero overhead, but sacrifices network isolation.