Kong/kubernetes-ingress-controller
Kubernetes Ingress Controller
This project is an API gateway and ingress controller designed to manage traffic, security, and service connectivity within Kubernetes environments. It operates as a controller that monitors cluster state to reconcile gateway configurations with desired infrastructure definitions, ensuring that network policies and routing rules remain consistent across distributed deployments.
The system distinguishes itself through a modular request pipeline that allows for the injection of custom logic to handle transformations, security checks, and logging. It supports declarative infrastructure management, enabling users to define traffic policies and gateway settings through version-controlled manifests. By integrating with external secret storage and providing centralized control over multiple gateway instances, it maintains a unified approach to policy enforcement and identity management for API consumers.
Beyond core routing, the platform provides comprehensive traffic management capabilities, including load balancing, health monitoring, and request path modification for HTTP, TCP, and gRPC protocols. It facilitates secure communication through integrated certificate management and allows for the grouping of consumer policies to ensure consistent access control across service architectures.
Features
- Ingress Controllers - Directs external HTTP, TCP, and gRPC traffic to internal cluster services using standard infrastructure definitions and routing rules.
- Gateway API Traffic Configurations - Configures cluster networking using standard gateway resources to manage HTTP, TCP, and gRPC traffic flows.
- API Gateway Control Planes - Coordinates traffic routing and access control policies across a distributed network of gateway instances.
- Declarative Infrastructure Management - Manages gateway configurations through version-controlled manifest files to ensure a consistent and reproducible network state.
- Traffic Management Gateways - Applies security, rate-limiting, and request transformation policies to network traffic flowing into the service architecture.
- Traffic Routing - Directs incoming HTTP, TCP, and gRPC traffic to cluster services using standard infrastructure definitions and routing rules.
- API Gateway Security - Acts as a platform for managing traffic, enforcing security policies, and applying rate limits to services within a distributed network.
- Request Path Rewriters - Provides dynamic modification of incoming request paths to align with internal application requirements and expected endpoint structures.
- Cloud Native Service Managers - Registers and balances traffic across backend service replicas while performing health checks to ensure high availability.
- Declarative Infrastructure Reconciliation - Continuously monitors and enforces desired network states by comparing current gateway configurations against version-controlled definitions.
- Gateway High Availability - Ensures high availability and performance by automating the deployment of multiple gateway replicas.
- Infrastructure as Code Tools - Enables the definition and synchronization of network gateway settings through version-controlled manifest files for consistent cluster state.
- Declarative Configuration Management - Defines infrastructure settings and traffic policies using version-controlled manifest files.
- Kubernetes Controllers - Uses Kubernetes reconciliation loops to maintain gateway configuration state based on cluster manifest definitions.
- Gateway Node Orchestrators - Orchestrates multiple gateway nodes to synchronize settings and operations across distributed environments.
- Middleware-Based Request Pipelines - Provides a modular chain of pluggable components to intercept, modify, and process network requests.
- Dynamic Service Discovery - Maps logical service names to physical network addresses in real-time to maintain updated backend targets.
- Request Matching Rule Definitions - Directs incoming traffic to specific upstream services by evaluating URL patterns and protocol-specific routing rules.
- Health-Checked Routers - Distributes traffic across service replicas while performing health checks to ensure only operational endpoints receive requests.
- TLS Certificate Management - Automates the provisioning and management of TLS certificates to secure communication channels.
- Identity and Access Management - Tracks client identities and enforces access control policies based on unique credentials or tokens during the request lifecycle.
- API Request Authentication - Validates API requests using tokens to track client identities and enforce access controls.
- Traffic Security Policies - Enforces authentication, transformation, and rate-limiting rules on specific network flows.
- Request-Response Logic Extenders - Injects custom logic into the request-response lifecycle to manipulate data or traffic flow.
- Upstream Service Registrations - Registers backend applications as services to receive and process incoming network traffic.
- Networking - Ingress controller based on the Kong API gateway.
- Load Balancing and Ingress - Deploy Kong as a native Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
