Traffic policy between services

Study proxy data paths, identity, discovery, balancing, and failure amplification while evaluating when intermediary layers earn their cost.

10 published lessons1 module240 min of guided study
  1. 01
    Traffic policy between servicesadvanced · 10 lessons

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Traffic policy between services

Study proxy data paths, identity, discovery, balancing, and failure amplification while evaluating when intermediary layers earn their cost.

  1. 01

    Mesh data paths: trace the sockets before counting the proxies

    Follow sidecar and node-proxy traffic through interception, network namespaces, TLS boundaries, and optional application-layer waypoints.

    24 min
  2. 02

    Endpoint discovery: a successful update is still a delayed view

    Distinguish DNS, endpoint discovery, resource acceptance, readiness, and the time at which a proxy actually changes forwarding.

    24 min
  3. 03

    Load balancing: select using a signal with a known scope

    Compare round robin, least request, latency-aware selection, and consistent hashing while distinguishing requests, connections, and observed load.

    24 min
  4. 04

    Outlier ejection: remove a bad destination without losing the fleet

    Separate passive observations, active health, ejection limits, and the capacity consequences of a shrinking eligible endpoint set.

    24 min
  5. 05

    Circuit breakers: separate a recovery state machine from resource bounds

    Compare closed/open/half-open recovery with Envoy's per-proxy upstream resource limits and their enforcement scope.

    24 min
  6. 06

    Proxy retries: one user operation can create many attempts

    Count retries across layers, bound deadline consumption, and separate safe repetition from duplicate side effects.

    24 min
  7. 07

    Identity-aware policy: authentication is evidence, authorization is a decision

    Connect workload credentials, peer validation, mesh authorization, application permissions, and policy-enforcement placement.

    24 min
  8. 08

    Connection draining: stop new work without abandoning old work

    Coordinate endpoint removal, protocol-level draining, application shutdown, and bounded stream lifetimes during a rollout.

    24 min
  9. 09

    Control-plane failure: cached traffic has several expiration clocks

    Separate an established data plane from new configuration, startup, endpoint freshness, credential rotation, and resource TTL expiry.

    24 min
  10. 10

    Proxy cost: measure useful operations, attempts, and critical paths

    Attribute latency, CPU, memory, and connection work to a defined boundary while avoiding double-counted spans and misleading benchmark comparisons.

    24 min
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