- 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 `volume_zone` plugin will consider `beta` labels as `GA` labels during the scheduling
  process. Therefore, if the values of the labels are the same, PVs with `beta` labels
  can also be scheduled to nodes with `GA` labels. ([#118923](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118923), [@AxeZhan](https://github.com/AxeZhan))

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.

- 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. ([#92494](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92494), [@justaugustus](https://github.com/justaugustus)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and 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 change applies zone labels to vSphere Volumes automatically. The zone labels are visible on the PV: ([#72687](https://github.com/kubernetes/ku...

* 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.

- Updated distroless iptables to use released image `registry.k8s.io/build-image/distroless-iptables:v0.2.2`
  - Updated setcap to use released image `registry.k8s.io/build-image/setcap:bullseye-v1.4.2` ([#116509](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/116509), [@cpanato](https://github.com/cpanato)) [SIG Testing]