Architecting the programmable network stack. From eBPF-powered Cilium observability and Istio mTLS identity to Kubernetes CNI fabrics.
Programmable Dataplanes & L7 Observability
Calico, Flannel, Pod-to-Pod & Service LB
Deep-dive into dedicated listing pages for every major networking discipline, optimized for professional reference and architectural planning.
The network stack is no longer static. eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) allows engineers to run safe, high-performance programs directly in the Linux kernel. By utilizing eBPF for networking (via Cilium), we can bypass the slow traditional IP stack entirely for container-to-container communication, reducing latency by up to 50% while gaining deep L7 visibility into every request without a sidecar.
As microservices scale, managing trust becomes complex. Service Meshes (Istio/Linkerd) decouple security from the application code. By utilizing mutual TLS (mTLS) by default, the mesh ensures that Service A can only communicate with Service B if it has the correct identity certificate.
The CNI (Container Network Interface) is the standard for Kubernetes pod networking. Whether using a simple overlay (VXLAN/Geneve) or native routing (BGP with Calico), the goal is a flat, performant IP space where every pod can reach every other pod.
Legacy 'Ingress' resources were too limited for complex traffic steering. The new Kubernetes Gateway API provides a role-oriented approach to L4-L7 load balancing. By separating the 'Infrastructure' (GatewayClass) from the 'Routing' (HTTPRoute), engineers can manage complex A/B testing, Canary deployments, and SSL termination with much higher granularity and multi-vendor portability.
"An Envoy process running alongside the app container, handling discovery and security automatically for the workload."
"eXpress Data Path (XDP) provides the absolute highest performance for packet filtering by running programs on the network card driver."
"An Istio resource that defines how traffic is split between different versions of a service during a rollout or failover."
