Cilium

Cilium: Secure Network Connectivity

Cilium is an open source software providing and securing network connectivity between application services deployed using Linux container management platforms like Kubernetes, utilizing eBPF/XDP for high performance container networking.

What is Cilium?

Cilium is an open source software used to provide and secure network connectivity between application services deployed using Linux container management platforms like Kubernetes. It is developed by the Cilium Project in collaboration with many leaders from the technology industry.

A key capability provided by Cilium is connecting and securing microservices based applications running on container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. It provides features like load balancing, network security policies, transparent encryption, Kubernetes integrations and cluster mesh routing.

Some of the key technologies used and pioneered by Cilium include:

• eBPF and XDP for high performance container networking and load balancing
• Identity based security model to apply network security policies
• Use of transparent encryption (IPSec) for encrypting container traffic
• Host routing for efficient East-West routing between containers
• Integrations with Kubernetes components like kube-proxy, CNI, CRI

Cilium helps simplify networking for container deployments and allows securing connectivity between microservices without changes to the application code. It is used by cloud providers, financial services companies, healthcare organizations among many others to run highly scalable and secure applications.

Cilium Features

Official Links