Spiderpool is an IP Address Management (IPAM) plugin for Kubernetes focused on underlay and RDMA networking scenarios, particularly where pods need to attach directly to a physical network via Macvlan, SR-IOV, or IPvlan. It is a CNCF Sandbox project originated at DaoCloud.
Most CNIs (Calico, Cilium, Flannel) manage IPs as part of an overlay model, but underlay networks that share a LAN with the host require coordinated, non-conflicting address allocation, gateway detection, stale-lease cleanup, and sometimes affinity to specific nodes or namespaces. Spiderpool provides these via CRDs such as SpiderIPPool, SpiderSubnet, SpiderReservedIP, and SpiderMultusConfig, with garbage collection that reconciles leases against actual pod state to avoid IP leakage during crashes.
Spiderpool is typically deployed alongside Multus CNI so pods can attach to multiple networks, and it integrates with Macvlan, SR-IOV, Cilium, Calico, and Weave. Its main audience is operators running Kubernetes on bare metal or for telco/AI workloads where high-performance underlay and RDMA networks are required.
