Docker-Desktop k8 cluster problems when port-forwarding to load balancer

I am running the simple deployment below (webapp with 5 replicas and a load balancer) in the single node Docker Desktop K8 cluster on Windows as host. The webapp simply serves a page that displays the hostname, so I can validate that the load balancer is balancing incoming traffic.

When I "curl" the load balancer from another pod within the cluster, it distributes the traffic as expected, resulting in different hostnames that I receive in the resulting curl response's content section.

Unfortunately, I am facing problems when I am "port-forwarding" traffic outside the cluster from my Windows host to that load balancer. I am using the following command to do so:

kubectl port-forward service/mywebapp-svc :80

Now, I can access the webapp from a local browser, but it seems to always sending traffic to the same pod (even when I clear cache or use different browsers). Also, a curl from the Windows host to the forwarded port is resulting in the same pod receiving the traffic.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: mydeployment
  labels:
    app: mywebapp
spec:
  replicas: 5
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: mywebapp
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: mywebapp
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: mycontainer
        image: mywebapp:latest
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mywebapp-svc
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: mywebapp
  ports:
  - port: 80
    protocol: TCP

Solution

You are experiencing the effect of HTTP 1.1 keepalive. Test with curl instead of a browser and you will see the distribution. Kubernetes Service distributes based on the TCP connection and has no clue about HTTP on top of that.