You can connect containers directly to a physical network interface by using the macvlan plugin. By using this plugin, the containers appear as physical devices on the network.

Most of the container images do not have a DHCP client. The dhcp plugin acts as a proxy DHCP client for the containers to interact with a DHCP server.

The host system lacks network access to the container. To enable network connections from outside the host to the container, the container must have an IP on the same network as the host.

The macvlan plugin lets you connect a container to the same network as the host. This applies only to rootful containers, as rootless containers cannot use the macvlan and dhcp plugins.

You can create a MacVLAN network by using the podman network create --driver=macvlan command.