externalTrafficPolicy default

[micxba]

I am curious why the externalTrafficPolicy default is Local as opposed to Cluster? Took us a bit to find out but on our base-metal cluster using metalLB it resulted in traffic to only go to one envoy gateway pod. Once we set

spec:
  provider:
    type: Kubernetes
    kubernetes:
      envoyService:
        externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster

it started distributing traffic appropriately. Just an off choice for a default if you ask me.

[arkodg]

with Local, traffic from the external LB is always sent to the node where the pod is running, so

1. may use one less hop than Cluster which may send to any node
2. no NATing is involved, so client IP is retained