--- title: Which IP does your Kubernetes pod actually use for... description: A discussion about how Kubernetes pod egress traffic works and which IP external services actually see when a pod connects out, relevant for API allowlisting... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/which-ip-does-your-kubernetes-pod-actually-use-for-outbound-traffic--kratyivyi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Which IP does your Kubernetes pod actually use for outbound traffic? | daily.dev og:description: A discussion about how Kubernetes pod egress traffic works and which IP external services actually see when a pod connects out, relevant for API allowlisting... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/which-ip-does-your-kubernetes-pod-actually-use-for-outbound-traffic--kratyivyi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/KratYIvyI.png og:image:alt: Which IP does your Kubernetes pod actually use for outbound traffic? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Which IP does your Kubernetes pod actually use for outbound traffic? **[Kubernetes & Cloud Native Community](https://daily.dev/sources/kubernetescloudnativecommunity)** · [@divyansh30](https://daily.dev/divyansh30) · 1 min read · 34 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary A discussion about how Kubernetes pod egress traffic works and which IP external services actually see when a pod connects out, relevant for API allowlisting and database access restrictions. References a detailed writeup on how Civo Kubernetes routes outbound pod traffic, covering SNAT flow and why multiple pods can share one public egress IP. Poses questions to other Kubernetes engineers about handling fixed egress IPs and diagnosing allowlist breakages after cluster changes. ## Content This gets confusing pretty quickly when an external API or database asks you to whitelist the IP your application is connecting from. Your pod has an IP, the worker node has another IP, and the cluster may have a public egress IP. But which one does the external service actually see? This comes up a lot when working with API allowlists, databases, SaaS platforms, or any external service that restricts access by source IP. I'm curious how other Kubernetes engineers handle this: - Do you use a fixed egress IP? - Have you ever had an IP allowlist break after a cluster change? - How do you check the actual public IP your pods are using? I came across a detailed explanation of how Civo Kubernetes handles pod egress traffic, including the SNAT flow, why multiple pods can appear to use a single public IP, and which IP should be used for outbound allowlisting. https://www.kubeblogs.com/how-civo-kubernetes-routes-pod-traffic-single-egress-ip-explained/ How are you handling Kubernetes egress and IP allowlisting in your clusters? #Kubernetes #CloudNative #KubernetesNetworking #DevOps #CloudInfrastructure ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@agustinbarrientos** · 0 upvotes > Try giving every cluster an explicit egress IP before the first vendor asks for an allowlist **@kabirzfw** · 0 upvotes > All private resources connect via NAT gateway and that has en egress IP. > How complicated can it be? why would you give your compute resources public static IPs anyway? Is there a use case for that? ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Understanding Kubernetes Networking](https://daily.dev/posts/understanding-kubernetes-networking-oooxha7or) · cilium · 22 upvotes · 1 comments - [Kubernetes Networking Explained Without the Hand-Waving](https://daily.dev/posts/kubernetes-networking-explained-without-the-hand-waving-b9yscwngi) · Medium · 5 upvotes · 1 comments - [Kubernetes Networking Explained: From ClusterIP to Cilium Service Mesh](https://daily.dev/posts/kubernetes-networking-explained-from-clusterip-to-cilium-service-mesh-rhwqkcwdn) · freeCodeCamp · 5 upvotes · 1 comments - [What Is Kubernetes Networking?](https://daily.dev/posts/what-is-kubernetes-networking--1qghzles9) · Isovalent · 15 upvotes · 0 comments - [Inside the Packet: How Kubernetes Networking Actually Works at L3/L4](https://daily.dev/posts/inside-the-packet-how-kubernetes-networking-actually-works-at-l3-l4-mlktkkrux) · Container Journal · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/which-ip-does-your-kubernetes-pod-actually-use-for-outbound-traffic--kratyivyi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/which-ip-does-your-kubernetes-pod-actually-use-for-outbound-traffic--kratyivyi","headline":"Which IP does your Kubernetes pod actually use for outbound traffic?","text":"A discussion about how Kubernetes pod egress traffic works and which IP external services actually see when a pod connects out, relevant for API allowlisting and database access restrictions. 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