## The problem / background

• You have a limited IP address space to use for Docker.
• Docker’s default pool is a /12.
• For Compose it allocates /16s from it by default.
• This gives each Compose project 65,536 IPs.
• That’s likely overkill for most folks’ needs.
• It also effectively limits you to having 16 Compose projects.

The other problem we’d like to solve, is to provide some space outside of the allocation pool for Compose projects that want to define their own IP ranges to use. Like you’d do for DHCP, we want a pool and some reserved space.