Open Source Web Gateways

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Envoy Proxy

Envoy is a high-performance C++ distributed proxy designed for cloud-native applications. Originally developed at Lyft, it provides advanced observability, load balancing, and traffic management capabilities for microservices architectures.

Key Features

Advanced Observability

Built-in metrics, distributed tracing, and logging for comprehensive visibility.

Protocol Support

HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, gRPC, WebSocket, MongoDB, Redis, and more.

Dynamic Configuration

Hot-reloadable configuration via xDS APIs (CDS, EDS, LDS, RDS).

Advanced Load Balancing

Multiple algorithms including ring hash, maglev, least request, and random.

Use Cases

  • Service Mesh: Data plane proxy for Istio, Consul Connect, and other service meshes
  • Edge Proxy: API gateway and edge proxy for cloud-native applications
  • Load Balancer: Advanced load balancing with health checking
  • Observability: Centralized metrics and tracing collection
  • Security: mTLS, rate limiting, and authentication

Configuration Example

Basic Envoy listener and cluster configuration:

static_resources:
  listeners:
  - name: listener_0
    address:
      socket_address:
        address: 0.0.0.0
        port_value: 10000
    filter_chains:
    - filters:
      - name: envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager
        typed_config:
          "@type": type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.network.http_connection_manager.v3.HttpConnectionManager

Advantages

  • High performance C++ implementation
  • Comprehensive observability out of the box
  • Protocol-agnostic architecture
  • Dynamic configuration without restarts
  • Used by major cloud providers and platforms

Official Resources