Cilium is an open-source, cloud-native solution that leverages eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) to provide and secure network connectivity between application workloads. It's designed for modern containerized environments like Kubernetes, offering advanced networking, observability, and security features.
Key Features:
- eBPF-based Acceleration: Utilizes eBPF for high-performance packet processing and network policy enforcement directly in the Linux kernel.
- CNI (Container Network Interface) Plugin: Integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes as a CNI plugin, providing networking for pods.
- Network Policy Enforcement: Enables fine-grained network policy enforcement at Layer 3-7, including support for HTTP, gRPC, and Kafka.
- Service Mesh Integration: Can function as a service mesh, providing features like traffic management, mutual authentication, and encryption.
- Observability: Offers deep visibility into network traffic and application behavior, including metrics, tracing, and network flow logs.
- Cluster Mesh: Supports multi-cluster networking, allowing workloads to communicate across different Kubernetes clusters.
- Transparent Encryption: Provides automatic encryption of network traffic using WireGuard or IPsec.
Use Cases:
- High-Performance Networking: Accelerate network performance in Kubernetes environments.
- Network Security: Implement granular network policies to secure microservices and containerized applications.
- Service Mesh: Provide service mesh capabilities without the complexity of traditional service meshes.
- Observability: Gain deep insights into network traffic and application behavior for troubleshooting and monitoring.
- Multi-Cluster Networking: Connect and secure workloads across multiple Kubernetes clusters.
