Links are a way of expressing a relationship between one container and another. When you link a container, you create a parent/child relationship between the two. As a side effect links also allow you to name containers and reference them by name. Containers can be references by more than one name.
This the new link feature we will be disabling intercontainer communication by default. Containers will not be able to communicate with each other over the docker0 bridge without having a link to that container. Even with a link, a parent can only communicate to the ports exposed by the child and nothing more.
Initially links will be expressed by injecting the child's data into the parent's environment accessible via namespaced variables: