Q&A with Kubernetes SIG Network Chair and Google's Tim Hockin Regarding Kubernetes Networking

 The Cloud Native networking landscape, covering networking is one of most fundemental and an extremely complex aspect of Cloud Native computing. Kubernetes networking for example, has to handle the following scenarios. Container to container communications, which are typically handled by pods. Pod to Pod communications, which by design needs to happen without Network Address Translation (NAT). Pods usually are assigned an unique IP address in a flat address space which causes scalability concerns.

Pod to Service communications, which is a complex topic in its own right and has to deal with load balancing, service discovery and so on. External to Service communications, which often deals with the same aspects i.e. load balancing, service discovery and so on and has it's own peculiarities.

The Cloud Native networking landscape, covering networking is one of most computer science vs information technology and an extremely complex aspect of Cloud Native computing.

Kubernetes networking for example, has to handle the following scenarios. Container to container communications, which are typically handled by pods.

Pod to Pod communications, which by design needs to happen without Network Address Translation (NAT). Pods usually are assigned an unique IP address in a flat address space which causes scalability concerns. Pod to Service communications, which is a complex topic in its own right and has to deal with load balancing, service discovery and so on.

External to Service communications, which often deals with the same aspects i.e. load balancing, service discovery and so on and has it's own peculiarities. In addition, the Kubernetes Networking Model often needs to be implemented with a variety of third party providers that provide functionality for Kubernetes networking which further steepens the learning curve.

Consequently, one of the staples at Kubecon+CloudNativeCon conferences is a session on Networking Intro and Deep Dive. This new instance of the session which will be presented at the upcoming virtual KubeCon+CloudNativeCon NA 2020 will start with an introduction and highlight the community work on networking as part of the SIG-Network as outlined in the presentation.

Ahead of the conference, InfoQ caught up with chair of Network SIG, Principal Software Engineer at Google, speaker at the conference, and a Kubernetes maintainer even before it was announced, Tim Hockin, about the history of Kubernetes Networking and the roadmap.