What is Network Policy?
A Kubernetes resource that controls which pods can communicate with each other.
A NetworkPolicy is a Kubernetes resource that acts as a firewall for pod-to-pod communication. Without network policies, all pods can talk to all other pods by default. NetworkPolicies use label selectors to define ingress (incoming) and egress (outgoing) rules based on pod selectors, namespace selectors, and IP blocks. Importantly, NetworkPolicies are enforced by the CNI plugin — your cluster needs Calico, Cilium, or another network-policy-capable CNI.
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Related Terms
More Networking Terms
API Gateway
A server that acts as entry point for APIs, handling routing, auth, and rate limiting.
Cilium
eBPF-based networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes clusters.
CNI (Container Network Interface)
A specification and plugins for configuring network interfaces in Linux containers.
eBPF
A Linux kernel technology for running sandboxed programs without changing kernel source code.
Istio
A service mesh that adds mTLS, traffic management, and observability to Kubernetes services.
Service Mesh
A dedicated infrastructure layer for managing service-to-service communication in microservices.
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