Question

A developer new to Kubernetes asks why their application pods can reach each other directly using pod IP addresses, even when the pods run on different nodes, without any port mapping or NAT configuration. Which statement best describes the Kubernetes networking model that makes this possible?

Accepted Answer

Every pod gets its own IP address and can communicate with any other pod across nodes without NAT, forming a flat network address space.

Answer

Pods share the node's IP address and communicate through port mappings configured by kube-proxy on each node.

Answer

Pods must be exposed through a NodePort Service before any pod-to-pod communication is possible across nodes.

Answer

Cross-node pod traffic is always routed through the API server, which performs address translation between nodes.