Shenyu is a microservices API gateway designed to route external traffic to backend services using dynamic rules and protocol conversion. It functions as a central entry point that manages traffic flow through a combination of an API traffic governor, a distributed configuration manager, and a security layer for protecting endpoints.
The project features a dynamic plugin architecture that allows for the injection of custom request processing logic without restarting the server. It utilizes a distributed coordination service to synchronize routing and policy updates across a gateway cluster in real time.
The gateway covers broad capability areas including traffic governance via rate limiting and circuit breaking, and security integration through token-based authorization and digital signature verification. It also provides observability through integrated tracing, metrics collection, and system health monitoring.