Contour 1.22: Envoy-Powered Ingress Evolution

Introduction

Contour 1.22, released on August 8, 2022, continues to evolve as a leading Envoy-powered ingress controller for Kubernetes. This release improves Gateway API support, enhances performance, and delivers better security features for managing edge traffic in Kubernetes clusters.

Networking changes tend to show up under pressure: rolling upgrades, failovers, and the ‘why can’t it connect?’ moments. This release is worth a look if you care about predictable traffic behavior and simpler troubleshooting in real clusters.

Gateway API Support

• Gateway API improvements provide better alignment with Kubernetes Gateway API standards.
• HTTPRoute enhancements enable more sophisticated routing rules and traffic management.
• TLSRoute support enables secure routing with automatic certificate management.
• BackendRef improvements provide better service and endpoint selection.

Performance Improvements

1. Envoy integration updates leverage latest Envoy performance improvements.
2. Connection handling optimizations reduce latency and improve throughput.
3. Resource usage improvements reduce CPU and memory footprint.
4. Scaling enhancements enable better handling of high-traffic scenarios.

Security Features

• TLS improvements provide better certificate management and rotation.
• mTLS support enables mutual TLS for service-to-service communication.
• Rate limiting enhancements provide more sophisticated throttling strategies.
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) integration improves protection against attacks.

Observability

• Metrics expansion exposes detailed ingress metrics for Prometheus.
• Distributed tracing support enables correlation of requests across services.
• Access logs improvements provide more detailed request/response information.
• Dashboard integration with Grafana provides visualization of ingress traffic.

Getting Started

kubectl apply -f https://projectcontour.io/quickstart/contour.yaml

Create an HTTPProxy:

apiVersion: projectcontour.io/v1
kind: HTTPProxy
metadata:
  name: my-app
spec:
  virtualhost:
    fqdn: my-app.example.com
  routes:
  - conditions:
    - prefix: /
    services:
    - name: my-app-service
      port: 80

Summary

Contour 1.22 continues to evolve as a leading ingress controller, providing teams with powerful edge routing capabilities backed by Envoy’s performance and features.