Envoy 1.18: Data Plane Evolution

Introduction

Envoy 1.18 — Data Plane Evolution — was released on April 13, 2021.

Edge and east-west traffic paths tend to be where reliability and security issues show up first — so small gateway and proxy changes can have outsized impact.

In this release: Envoy 1.18 introduces HTTP/3 support preview, improved WebAssembly filters, and enhanced performance for modern service mesh deployments.

HTTP/3 Support (Preview)

• QUIC protocol support enables HTTP/3 for improved performance, especially for mobile and high-latency connections.
• Connection migration enables seamless connection handoff during network changes.
• Multiplexing improvements reduce connection overhead for multiple concurrent requests.
• Backward compatibility ensures graceful fallback to HTTP/2 when HTTP/3 is unavailable.

WebAssembly Improvements

1. WASM filter stability improvements provide more reliable execution of custom filters.
2. Performance optimizations reduce overhead of WASM filter execution in the data path.
3. SDK enhancements improve developer experience for creating custom WASM filters.
4. Resource limits provide better isolation and protection from runaway filters.

Performance Enhancements

• Connection pooling improvements reduce latency and improve throughput.
• Memory management optimizations reduce memory footprint for high-traffic scenarios.
• CPU efficiency improvements reduce processing overhead for common operations.
• Load balancing enhancements provide better distribution of traffic across backends.

Observability & Debugging

• Access logging improvements provide more detailed request/response information.
• Metrics expansion exposes additional metrics for performance analysis.
• Tracing enhancements improve correlation of requests across service boundaries.
• Admin interface improvements provide better visibility into proxy state and configuration.

Getting Started

docker run envoyproxy/envoy:v1.18.0 --version

Summary

Envoy 1.18 continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in cloud-native networking, providing teams with a powerful, extensible data plane.