TechOps Examples

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Before you understand how Kubernetes hybrid nodes enable pod connectivity across networks, you first need to understand the hybrid architecture itself.

In many real environments, Kubernetes workloads do not live in isolation. Some services run inside a cloud Kubernetes cluster, while other applications and databases continue to run inside a corporate data center.

In this example setup, workloads run inside an EKS cluster within a VPC. When a backend pod needs to reach an internal service, the request leaves the VPC, passes through AWS Transit Gateway, moves through the corporate router, and finally reaches applications running inside the data center network.

At a high level, the traffic flow looks like this:

Kubernetes Pod → VPC network → Transit Gateway → Router → Corporate applications

While this connectivity is straightforward at the infrastructure level, Kubernetes introduces an additional networking requirement.

Pods use dynamic IP addresses from pod CIDR ranges managed by the CNI. When traffic targeting a pod IP reaches the network, the router must know which Kubernetes node is responsible for that pod.

With this understanding, the next step is enabling the network to learn where these pod networks exist.

In hybrid Kubernetes deployments, this is typically handled using one of the following approaches.

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a routing protocol used by routers to exchange information about which networks they can reach. Large networks use BGP to advertise the IP ranges they manage so that routers know where to forward traffic.

Some Kubernetes CNIs such as Cilium and Calico support BGP so that Kubernetes nodes can participate in this routing exchange.

In this model, each Kubernetes node behaves like a virtual router for the pod network assigned to it.

Each node receives a pod CIDR block from the CNI. For example, one node may host pods in the network:

10.85.1.0/24

Instead of expecting the corporate router to know this automatically, the node announces this pod network through BGP to the on prem router.

Once this happens, the router learns a route similar to this:

10.85.1.0/24 → via node 10.80.0.2

This means that whenever traffic arrives for any pod inside that network, the router forwards the packet to that Kubernetes node.

The node then uses the CNI to deliver the packet to the correct pod running on it.

The routing flow effectively becomes:

Router → Kubernetes node → Pod

This is exactly what the diagram illustrates.

Each hybrid node advertises its pod CIDR range to the router using BGP. The router stores these routes in its routing table and forwards traffic to the correct node whenever a packet targets a pod IP belonging to that range.

The key advantage of this approach is automatic route management. When nodes are added, removed, or rescheduled, their pod CIDR routes are advertised or withdrawn dynamically. The router’s routing table stays updated without manual configuration.

Because of this dynamic behavior, BGP is considered the most scalable and operationally clean solution for enabling pod connectivity across hybrid Kubernetes environments.

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