CKA Services and Networking Practice Question
You need to expose multiple HTTP services on a single IP address with path-based routing. Which resource should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Ingress with Service types like NodePort or LoadBalancer, thinking those can handle HTTP routing, but they only provide layer-4 load balancing without any awareness of HTTP paths or hostnames.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Ingress
Ingress is the correct resource because it provides HTTP/HTTPS layer-7 routing to multiple services based on hostnames or paths, all exposed on a single IP address. Services of type ClusterIP, NodePort, or LoadBalancer operate at layer 4 and cannot perform path-based routing. An Ingress controller (e.g., NGINX, HAProxy) implements the rules defined in the Ingress resource to direct traffic to the appropriate backend services.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Service of type ClusterIP
Why it's wrong here
ClusterIP exposes a Service on a cluster-internal virtual IP that is only reachable from within the cluster. It cannot be used to accept traffic from outside, nor does it support any HTTP path-based routing. To expose multiple HTTP services, you would need an external load balancer or proxy in front of them, so ClusterIP alone does not meet the requirement.
- ✗
NetworkPolicy
Why it's wrong here
NetworkPolicy is a Kubernetes object that defines firewall rules for pods, specifying which sources can connect to which pods on which ports. It does not perform L7 routing and cannot interpret URL paths to forward traffic to different Services. NetworkPolicy merely filters traffic that already arrives at a pod; it has no capability to expose services on a single external IP. Thus it is not a mechanism for exposing multiple HTTP services.
- ✗
Service of type NodePort
Why it's wrong here
NodePort exposes a Service on a static port in the 30000-32767 range across every Node's IP address. Each NodePort maps an entire TCP/UDP port to one specific Service, so it cannot route different URL paths to different Services. To expose multiple HTTP services this way, you would need a separate NodePort for each Service, resulting in many ports rather than a single IP. Hence NodePort does not support path-based routing on a single IP.
- ✓
Ingress
Why this is correct
Ingress is the standard Kubernetes API object for L7 HTTP routing, allowing you to define host- and path-based rules that direct traffic to multiple backend Services. A single Ingress controller receives external traffic on one IP (often via a load balancer) and routes each request to the appropriate Service based on the URL path. This exactly fulfills the requirement of exposing multiple HTTP services on a single IP address.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Services and Networking Fundamentals
Key term
Ingress Resources
Ingress Resources are Kubernetes API objects that manage external access to services inside a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS traffic, by defining rules for routing requests based on hostnames and paths.
Key term
Ingress Controller
An Ingress Controller is a specialized component that manages external access to services in a Kubernetes cluster by processing Ingress resources and routing traffic according to defined rules.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CKA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CKA exam.