Kubernetes networking connects Pods, Services and the outside world through CNI plugins, load balancers, ingress and egress controls.
An egress gateway routes selected Pod traffic through chosen nodes and rewrites its source to a fixed IP, so external firewalls can allowlist the cluster.
Ingress NGINX was retired in March 2026 and gets no more security fixes. Kubernetes recommends Gateway API; other Ingress controllers also still work.
Nodes in different clouds join one cluster network through an encrypted node mesh, usually WireGuard®, so every Pod can reach every other Pod without NAT.
No. Kubernetes does not encrypt traffic between Pods by default. Encrypt it between nodes with WireGuard® or IPsec, or between services with mutual TLS.
A CNI plugin gives each Pod an interface, IP address and routes. Compare Cilium, Calico and Flannel by routing mode, data plane, policy and encryption.
A service mesh routes service traffic through proxies to add mTLS identity, retries, traffic splitting and request metrics. Many clusters need less than that.
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