---
title: "Video: Everything You Need to Know about Kubernetes Services Networking in Your Rancher Cluster"
source: "https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-kubernetes-services-networking-2/"
description: "Calico utilizes Kubernetes Services, an abstraction layer which defines a logical set of pods and enables load balancing and service discovery for those pods."
---

[Technical Blog](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/category/technical-blog/)

# Video: Everything You Need to Know about Kubernetes Services Networking in Your Rancher Cluster

By [John Armstrong](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/author/john-armstrong/) on Jun 01, 2020 • 3 min read

As a leading, open-source multi-cluster orchestration platform, [Rancher](http://rancher.com/) lets operations teams deploy, manage and secure enterprise Kubernetes. Rancher also gives users a set of [CNI](http://github.com/containernetworking/cni) options to choose from, including open-source [Project Calico](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/project-calico/). Calico provides native Layer 3 routing capability for Kubernetes pods which simplifies the networking architecture, increases networking performance and provides a rich network policy model that makes it easy to lock down communication so the only traffic that flows is the traffic you want to flow.

Services are one of the key Kubernetes primitives you need to understand to glue microservices together and expose your applications outside of the cluster. The [Service resource](http://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/) provides an abstract way to expose an application running on a set of pods as a network service.

## Accessing services in a Rancher cluster using Calico

Calico provides a range of options for accessing services in a Rancher cluster depending on your needs and the specific cluster environment. For example, you may need to limit access to specific external clients, or you may be running workloads that are latency-sensitive. Understanding how services work in your cluster and the many services options available to you can help you determine the best approach to addressing your specific use cases. Working through this process will raise questions, such as:

- What’s the difference between a Cluster IP, Node Port, and Load Balancer service?

- How do all these abstractions translate to real under-the-covers networking behavior?

- What role does Calico play in services deployment?

Here is a short 7-minute video that explains all this and more!

In the video you’ll learn:

- How pods consume services within the cluster (Cluster IPs)

- The different ways a service can be consumed outside of the cluster (Node Ports, Load Balancers, and Service IP advertisement)

- What is External Traffic Policy and how does it impact a service?

- How Services and Network Policy interact

- How all this works under the covers in concrete networking terms

- What differences Calico’s native service handling capabilities bring to the picture compared to kube-proxy

Happy watching!

If you enjoyed this video then you may also like:

- [Everything you need to know about Kubernetes Ingress networking](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-kubernetes-ingress-networking/)

- [Everything you need to know about Kubernetes networking on AWS](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-kubernetes-pod-networking-on-aws/)

- [Everything you need to know about Kubernetes networking on Azure](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-kubernetes-networking-on-azure/)

- Free online [training and workshops](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/events/)

————————————————-

[**Free Online Training**](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/events/)

Access Live and On-Demand Kubernetes Tutorials

[**Calico Enterprise – Free Trial**](https://www.calicocloud.io/home)

Solve Common Kubernetes Roadblocks and Advance Your Enterprise Adoption

[Open Source](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/tags/open-source/)[Partner/Integration](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/tags/partner-integration/)[Project Calico](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/tags/project-calico/)

Add Tigera as a preferred source on Google to see more of our content in your search results.

[![Add as a preferred source on Google](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/app/themes/tigera2021/dist/img/google-preferred-source-light.png)](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=tigera.io)

## Related posts

[![What’s New in Calico: Winter 2026 Release](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/app/uploads/2026/03/What-is-new-in-Calico-winter-2026.png)](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/whats-new-in-calico-winter-2026-release/)

[Company Blog](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/category/company-blog/)

#### [What’s New in Calico: Winter 2026 Release](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/whats-new-in-calico-winter-2026-release/)

By [Veronika Smolik](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/author/veronika-smolik/)
on Mar 4, 2026

AI Powered Intelligence, Unified Traffic Observability and Scalable Infrastructure Management As anyone managing one or more Kubernetes clusters knows by now, scaling can introduce an exponentially growing number of problems. The sheer volume of metrics,...

[Read more](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/whats-new-in-calico-winter-2026-release/)

[![Join Calico at KubeCon Europe 2026: AI Agents, Silent Discos, and Dutch Delights!](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/app/uploads/2026/02/Blog-Kubecon-Euro-2026-.png)](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/calico-at-kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe2026/)

#### [Join Calico at KubeCon Europe 2026: AI Agents, Silent Discos, and Dutch Delights!](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/calico-at-kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe2026/)

By [Tigera Team](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/author/marketingtigera-io/)
on Feb 25, 2026

The cloud-native community is heading to the historic canals and vibrant tech scene of Amsterdam for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026! From March 23–26, Amsterdam will be buzzing with the latest in Kubernetes, platform engineering,...

[Read more](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/calico-at-kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe2026/)

[![Project Calico 3.30+ Hackathon: Show Us What You Can Build!](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/app/uploads/2026/02/Blog-Hackathon-.png)](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/project-calico-3-30-hackathon-show-us-what-you-can-build/)

#### [Project Calico 3.30+ Hackathon: Show Us What You Can Build!](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/project-calico-3-30-hackathon-show-us-what-you-can-build/)

By [Tigera Team](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/author/marketingtigera-io/)
on Feb 17, 2026

Build the Future of Cloud-Native Networking! 🚀 The Calico community moves fast. With the releases of Calico 3.30 and 3.31, brings improvements in scalability, network security, and visibility. Now, we want to see what YOU...

[Read more](https://wordpress-1075849-4005834.cloudwaysapps.com/blog/project-calico-3-30-hackathon-show-us-what-you-can-build/)

<!-- plugin=object-cache-pro client=phpredis metric#hits=6163 metric#misses=18 metric#hit-ratio=99.7 metric#bytes=2213566 metric#prefetches=0 metric#store-reads=420 metric#store-writes=15 metric#store-hits=431 metric#store-misses=7 metric#sql-queries=33 metric#ms-total=949.00 metric#ms-cache=62.97 metric#ms-cache-avg=0.1451 metric#ms-cache-ratio=6.6 -->
