Envoy 1.22: HTTP/3 GA and WebAssembly Maturity

Introduction

Envoy 1.22, released on July 5, 2022, continues the evolution of the cloud-native data plane. This release introduces HTTP/3 General Availability, improves WebAssembly filter capabilities, and delivers performance enhancements for service mesh and API gateway deployments.

You’ll feel these improvements most at the edges: higher-latency clients, mobile networks, and “spiky” traffic patterns where connection handling and protocol efficiency matter. On the platform side, the WASM story is also about safer extensibility—adding custom logic in the data path without rebuilding (or forking) the proxy.

HTTP/3 General Availability

• 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.

Kubernetes Integration

• Service discovery improvements enhance automatic discovery of Kubernetes services and endpoints.
• ConfigMap integration enables dynamic configuration updates without restarts.
• RBAC support enables secure proxy configuration with Kubernetes service accounts.
• Helm charts simplify deployment and management in Kubernetes environments.

Getting Started

docker run envoyproxy/envoy:v1.22.0 --version

Deploy Envoy in Kubernetes:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: envoy
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: envoy
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: envoy
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: envoy
        image: envoyproxy/envoy:v1.22.0
        ports:
        - containerPort: 10000

Summary

Envoy 1.22 continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in cloud-native networking, providing teams with a powerful, extensible data plane.