Help Center/ Cloud Container Engine/ User Guide/ Networking/ Ingresses/ LoadBalancer Ingresses/ Forwarding Policy Priorities of LoadBalancer Ingresses
Updated on 2025-09-05 GMT+08:00
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Forwarding Policy Priorities of LoadBalancer Ingresses

CCE sets up forwarding policies on the ELB console based on the rules specified in the ingress configurations when creating LoadBalancer ingresses.

To address more complex traffic routing requirements, CCE has integrated advanced forwarding policies from ELB. This integration enables features such as URL redirection and rewriting. Note that the sorting logic for these advanced forwarding policies differs from that of standard forwarding policies.

The following table lists their differences.

Scenario

No Priority Specified

Priority Specified

ELB advanced forwarding disabled

Forwarding policies are sorted based on domain name or path mappings. For details, see Default Sorting.

Forwarding policies are sorted based on a specified priority.

  • For forwarding policies within the same ingress: Use the kubernetes.io/elb.rule-priority-enabled annotation. If this annotation is set to true, the forwarding policies are sorted according to the sequence of forwarding rules defined in the paths field in the ingress YAML file. Policies listed higher in the YAML file have a higher priority.
  • For forwarding policies across different ingresses: The kubernetes.io/elb.ingress-order annotation is used to determine the priority. Additionally, kubernetes.io/elb.rule-priority-enabled is set to true by default. The rules are as follows:
    • The kubernetes.io/elb.ingress-order value ranges from 1 to 1000. A smaller value indicates a higher priority.
    • Ingresses with the kubernetes.io/elb.ingress-order annotation have a higher priority than those without the annotation.
    • If multiple ingresses are labeled with the kubernetes.io/elb.ingress-order annotation, they are sorted by the annotation value. Within the same ingress, forwarding policies are then sorted by their listed sequence.

For more details, see Configuring the Priorities of Forwarding Rules for LoadBalancer Ingresses.

ELB advanced forwarding enabled

Forwarding policies are prioritized by creation time, with earlier-created policies having a higher priority. Requests are matched and forwarded accordingly. For details, see Sort by Creation Time.
Advanced forwarding is enabled by default in some regions. Check if this function is enabled in your region when adding a forwarding policy.
Figure 1 Checking if advanced forwarding is enabled

Default Sorting

If the ELB advanced forwarding policies are not enabled, the default sorting rule of forwarding policies is as follows:

  • Forwarding rule priorities are independent of each other regardless of domain names. When a request matches both a domain name-based rule and a URL-based rule, the domain name-based rule is matched first.
  • URL-based forwarding rules are applied in the following order of priority: an exact match rule, a prefix match rule, and a regular expression match rule. For multiple matches of the same type, only the longest URL-based forwarding rule will be applied.
Table 1 Example of a forwarding policy with the default sorting

Forwarding Policy

Specified Value

Order

URL (exact match)

/test1/test2/test3

1

URL (prefix match)

/test1/test2

2

URL (prefix match)

/test1

3

Once a forwarding policy is created, the system automatically sorts it based on the default sorting rule. Examples are as follows:

  • The access request to www.example.com/test1/test2 matches both forwarding policies 2 and 3. If the match types are the same, the priority is determined by the length of the URL, with longer URLs having higher priority. In this case, the access request will be forwarded based on the forwarding policy 2.
  • The access request to www.example.com/test1/test2/test3 matches forwarding policies 1, 2, and 3. An exact match is preferred, so the access request will be forwarded based on the forwarding policy 1.

Sort by Creation Time

When ELB advanced forwarding is enabled, each forwarding policy is numbered based on its creation time. A smaller value indicates a higher priority. Requests are matched sequentially to these policies. Once a policy is matched, the request is forwarded accordingly.

The rules for configuring the priority of a forwarding policy are as follows:

  • The existing forwarding policies will maintain their original priority sequence before an advanced forwarding policy is configured.
  • Once an advanced forwarding policy is set up, any new forwarding policy added will have the lowest priority. The default forwarding policy always has the lowest priority and is not included in the sorting process.
Table 2 Example of a forwarding policy configured with priorities

Forwarding Policy

Specified Value

Priority

URL (prefix match)

/test1

1

URL (exact match)

/test1

2

In this example, the access request to www.example.com/test1 satisfies both forwarding policies 1 and 2, so the request will be forwarded based on the forwarding policy 1.

Parent Topic: LoadBalancer Ingresses