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kubelb

mixedKubernetes · minikubeCluster & infrastructureJuly 8, 2026

the question

Does a Kubernetes Service load-balance fairly under HTTP keep-alive?

what came out

No -- iptables balances new connections fairly (Gini 0.11) but conntrack pins each persistent connection to one pod, so replica coverage follows N(1-(1-1/N)^K) and stays below N even at 2x replicas. Keep-alive starves replicas. Real minikube, pre-registered, independently verified.

method & receipts

  • Result: mixed
  • Pre-registered the prediction was written down and committed before the run.
  • Reproducible one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
  • Independently reviewed an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
  • Machine-readable claims every reported number, in a checkable file.
  • Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.

→ read the code and re-run it

github.com/v-code01/kubelb