# Authenticating outside the cluster
This example shows you how to configure a client with client-go to authenticate
to the Kubernetes API from an application running outside the Kubernetes
cluster.
You can use your kubeconfig file that contains the context information
of your cluster to initialize a client. The kubeconfig file is also used
by the `kubectl` command to authenticate to the clusters.
## Running this example
Make sure your `kubectl` is configured and pointed to a cluster. Run
`kubectl get nodes` to confirm.
Run this application with:
cd out-of-cluster-client-configuration
go build -o app .
./app
Running this application will use the kubeconfig file and then authenticate to the
cluster, and print the number of pods in the cluster every 10 seconds:
./app
There are 3 pods in the cluster
There are 3 pods in the cluster
There are 3 pods in the cluster
...
Press <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>C</kbd> to quit this application.
> **Note:** You can use the `-kubeconfig` option to use a different config file. By default
this program picks up the default file used by kubectl (when `KUBECONFIG`
environment variable is not set).