Benjamin Cane • 9/20/2025

Did you know Kube-proxy doesn’t perform load-balancing itself?* It’s iptables (by default).

This technical article clarifies that Kube-proxy in Kubernetes does not perform load-balancing itself; instead, it configures iptables (or IPVS/nftables) to handle traffic routing. It details the layer-4 load-balancing mechanism, explains why this causes issues for gRPC and HTTP/2 due to connection reuse, and mentions scaling challenges and alternatives like IPVS or service meshes for layer-7 routing.

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#Grpc #Kubernetes #Iptables