Forward the viktorbarzin.me:53 pod block to the Technitium ClusterIP
(10.96.0.53, same as the .lan block) instead of 8.8.8.8/1.1.1.1. Pods
become ordinary internal clients (CNAME -> apex -> live Traefik LB;
mail -> 10.0.20.1), fixing the 27 non-proxied [External] uptime-kuma
monitors that rode the TP-Link NAT loopback (hard-down since 06-09;
loopback refuses flows whose source equals the reflection target, which
all pfSense-SNAT'd cluster traffic does).
Enabled by re-testing a stale premise: on k8s 1.34 pods DO reach the
ETP=Local Traefik LB IP (kube-proxy short-circuits in-cluster traffic
to LB IPs; verified from pods on three non-Traefik nodes) — re-verify
after major k8s upgrades; canary = [External] fleet going red. The
NAT-layer alternatives (pfSense rdr, SNAT-drop) were rejected: both
fight return-path asymmetry and deepen TP-Link dependency.
Verified in-pod: immich -> .203 + HTTPS 200, mail -> 10.0.20.1,
forgejo -> Traefik ClusterIP (pin kept for Technitium-outage
resilience). Proxied [External] monitors now test the internal path —
true edge fidelity moves to the external vantage (ha-london, next fix).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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