- Updated distroless I-tables to use registry.k8s.io/build-image/distroless-iptables:v0.2.5 ([#118541](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118541), [@jeremyrickard](https://github.com/jeremyrickard)) [SIG Testing]

The main milestones for SIG Network this release are the graduation of IPVS-based load balancing and CoreDNS to general availability.

IPVS is an alternative approach to in-cluster load balancing that uses in-kernel hash tables rather than the previous iptables approach, while CoreDNS is a replacement for kube-dns for service discovery.

### SIG Node

SIG-Node advanced several features and made incremental improvements in a few key topic areas this release.

- In CRD webhook conversion, Kubernetes will now ignore changes to metadata other than for labels and annotations. ([#77743](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/77743), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))

- This PR will leverage subtests on the existing table tests for the scheduler units. ([#63665](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/63665), [@xchapter7x](https://github.com/xchapter7x))
- This PR will leverage subtests on the existing table tests for the scheduler units. ([#63666](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/63666), [@xchapter7x](https://github.com/xchapter7x))

- Kube-proxy iptables: new metric sync_proxy_rules_iptables_total that exposes the number of rules programmed per table in each iteration ([#99653](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99653), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Instrumentation and Network]

    - https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/92250
  
    To address this, the new debian-hyperkube-base image (v1.1.0) uses the
    debian-iptables base image (v12.1.0), which includes iptables-wrapper, a
    script used to determine the correct iptables mode to run in. ([#92493](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92493), [@justaugustus](https://github.com/justaugustus)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and Release]

  - cAdvisor json endpoints have been deprecated since 1.15. ([#78504](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/78504), [@dashpole](https://github.com/dashpole))

    - https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/92250
  
    To address this, the new debian-hyperkube-base image (v1.1.0) uses the
    debian-iptables base image (v12.1.0), which includes iptables-wrapper, a
    script used to determine the correct iptables mode to run in. ([#92494](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92494), [@justaugustus](https://github.com/justaugustus)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and Release]

    - [Promoted endPort in Network Policy to Stable](#promoted-endport-in-network-policy-to-stable)
    - [Promoted Local Ephemeral Storage Capacity Isolation to Stable](#promoted-local-ephemeral-storage-capacity-isolation-to-stable)
    - [Promoted core CSI Migration to Stable](#promoted-core-csi-migration-to-stable)
    - [Promoted CSI Ephemeral Volume to Stable](#promoted-csi-ephemeral-volume-to-stable)

* Bump up version number of debian-base, debian-hyperkube-base and debian-iptables.  ([#67026](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67026), [@satyasm](https://github.com/satyasm))
    * Also updates dependencies of users of debian-base.
    * debian-base version 0.3.1 is already available.