I have docker containers on the bridged network. Each container gets an IP address from 172.17.0.2 and up, according to the way the containers are ordered.

I would like containers to resolve a container name to the assigned IP address. Is this possible? It should be unaffected when I reorder the boot order of containers. This way I don't need to exposes container services (port mapping) which are only used by other containers.

Okay, this is actually pretty simple to achieve. First create a user-defined network in Docker:

# docker network create my_network

Then configure the Network Type for all containers which need direct access to each other to Custom: my_network. Remove port mappings which are only needed for internal traffic. Container names will resolve to the (internal) IP address.