Name: Why Is It Always DNS?: Rethinking & Engineering Node-Level DNS Resolution in Kubernetes - Shaheen Sayyed & Ankur Singh, Red Hat
Start: 2026-05-18T16:30:00-0500
End: 2026-05-18T17:10:00-0500

May 18-20, 2026
Minneapolis, MN
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Why Is It Always DNS?: Rethinking & Engineering Node-Level DNS Resolution in Kubernetes - Shaheen Sayyed & Ankur Singh, Red Hat

Monday May 18, 2026 4:30pm - 5:10pm CDT

200F (Level Two)

Is it DNS or is it network? & why is answer always DNS? In K8s, most clusters quietly rely on /etc/resolv.conf on every node for all non-service name resolution. At scale, this dependency becomes a liability, reducing caching & observability while causing fragile forwarding, higher latency, upstream resolver overload, and host-level divergence in multi-cloud environments

This talk will explain how K8s actually consumes node DNS today & then present two solutions: CoreDNS for large, complex clusters; dnsmasq for medium scale that bring deterministic caching, controlled forwarding, traffic steering, and real visibility—turning DNS from black box into an engineered system component

Attendees will gain a framework to choose DNS implementation strategies by understanding trade-offs based on cluster scale, workload type and platform maturity. We’ll compare CoreDNS & dnsmasq, surface real failure modes, & show how different designs affect latency, reliability, & blast radius.

Speakers