(Disclaimer - as with previous posts, this post was originally based on output generated by an LLM which I used to investigate and resolve the problem, though every word of it has been reviewed by my actual human brain, and meaningful edits were made)

I noticed something odd in my AdGuard Home dashboard: one host — culex¹, a Kubernetes control-plane node — appeared to be responsible for nearly 80% of all DNS queries on my network. My first thought was that something had gone wrong: a runaway process, a crashlooping pod making repeated lookups, or even something more sinister.

The reality was more mundane, though a neat opportunity to understand my tools a little better.