https://shengxu.pages.dev/en/tags/performance/Cloud architecture & DevOps notes by Shengxu: Kubernetes, Cilium, observability, LLM infra, AI agents.Hugo 0.153.2 & FixIt v0.4.0-alpha.3-20251225101113-8ffb9a95enFri, 09 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0800https://shengxu.pages.dev/en/posts/kubernetes-nftables-revolution-2026/Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0800https://shengxu.pages.dev/en/posts/kubernetes-nftables-revolution-2026/Kubernetes<p>In the networking world of Kubernetes, <code>kube-proxy</code> has long played the role of &ldquo;gatekeeper,&rdquo; responsible for distributing Service traffic to backend Pods. However, for years, we&rsquo;ve endured the performance pain of iptables mode or been forced to migrate to the more complex IPVS mode.</p> <p>Fast forward to 2026, with <strong>Kubernetes 1.33 reaching General Availability (GA) in April 2025</strong>, <code>nftables</code> mode is no longer an experimental option—it has become the &ldquo;new standard&rdquo; for production environments. In fact, with the release of v1.35 at the end of 2025, the once-reliable <code>ipvs</code> mode has been officially marked as <strong>Deprecated</strong>. This marks a complete &ldquo;return to fundamentals&rdquo; for the Linux kernel network stack in the cloud-native era.</p>