The transparent network mode is designed to connect Windows containers directly to the physical network. When using this mode, each container's network adapter is connected to an external Hyper-V virtual switch, which is bridged to the host's physical network adapter. This allows each container to obtain an IP address from the physical network's subnet, either statically assigned or dynamically from a DHCP server on that network. Consequently, containers appear on the physical network as if they were individual virtual or physical machines, fulfilling the requirement.

B. l2bridge: This mode is for specific use cases, such as Microsoft Azure Stack HCI, where containers are on the same IP subnet as the host but require static IP assignment. Transparent mode is the more common and direct solution for general physical network connectivity.

C. NAT: The Network Address Translation (NAT) mode is the default driver. It isolates containers on a private, internal network behind the host's IP address. Containers are not directly accessible on the physical network, which contradicts the requirement.

D. l2tunnel: This is an overlay network driver used for multi-host container networking, typically in a Docker Swarm cluster. It is not used for connecting containers on a single host directly to the local physical network.

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1. Microsoft Learn | Windows container networking: This official documentation details the networking drivers available for Windows containers.

Section: "Transparent network driver": "This driver gives containers direct access to the physical network by connecting them to an external Hyper-V virtual switch. IP addresses for containers can be assigned statically or dynamically from an external DHCP server." This directly supports the choice of the transparent network.

Section: "Network Address Translation (NAT) network driver": "This is the default driver... containers attached to a network created with the 'nat' driver will be connected to an internal Hyper-V switch and receive an IP address from the IP prefix specified by the user." This confirms NAT isolates containers.

Section: "L2bridge network driver": "This driver gives containers an IP address in the same IP subnet as the container host... This is recommended for workloads running on top of Microsoft Cloud Stack (Azure Stack HCI)." This shows its specific

non-general use case.

Section: "L2tunnel network driver": "This driver should be used with Docker Swarm on a Windows multi-host cluster..." This confirms its use for multi-host scenarios.