EKS services not honoring IPEXTERNALSERVICE tag for external address

Question

Hi,

I have a POD that receives connections on the TCP port 1352.  Unfortunately, that is a custom server app, and that port cat not be changed .  The client always tries to use 1352 to connect to the server.

I tryed to connect to that POD remotely, from internet.   To do, i created the following service:

```
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: domino-nrpc

spec:
  selector:
    app: hcl-domino
  ports:
  - name: nrpc
    protocol: TCP
    port: 1352
  externalIPs:
  - 18.101.94.170
```

Please note I configured as EXTERNALIP  the  IP Public address assigned to the EC2 instance where the nodeis running.  I also ensured that there was security group assigned to that EC2 instance allowing inbound traffic on port 1352.

However, when externally I tryed to connect to that port,  I was unable to reach it.
If I do a kubectl port-forward service/domino-nrpc 1352:1352  I am unable to use my local 127.0.0.1 address to access that service, but I want to be able to do the same from internet, trought the IP 18.101.94.170 exposed above using externalIPs
Can you please let me known why externalIPs is not working ?

```

However,  If I check the pods, it seems that the external IP is recognized, but it does not work.

$ kubectl get all
NAME           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/domino12   1/1     Running   0          103m

NAME                  TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       **EXTERNAL-IP **    PORT(S)    AGE
service/domino-nrpc   ClusterIP   10.100.134.184   **18.101.94.170**   1352/TCP   7s
service/kubernetes    ClusterIP   10.100.0.1                 443/TCP    5h44m

```

Answer

Hi,

What are the rationale in having it done this way? I would suggest to use LoadBalancer type to expose your service to the Internet. Having it you will be able to have:
- your node group in the private subnet
- static IP address instead of having service bound to the one node to have the same
- potential HA if application you are running is supporting multiple instances at time

```
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: domino-nrpc
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
```

EKS services not honoring IPEXTERNALSERVICE tag for external address

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