Traefik 3.0: Gateway API Native and Modern Routing

Introduction

Traefik 3.0, released on July 12, 2023, is most relevant if you expose services on Kubernetes and need stable, debuggable traffic paths. The practical wins usually show up at the edge: clearer traffic behavior, fewer surprises during failover, and easier debugging when routes go weird.

Gateway API Native Support

• Gateway API implementation provides first-class support for the Kubernetes Gateway API standard.
• HTTPRoute support enables sophisticated routing rules and traffic management.
• TLSRoute capabilities enable secure routing with automatic certificate management.
• BackendRef improvements provide better service and endpoint selection.

Modern Routing

1. Advanced routing rules enable complex traffic splitting and header-based routing.
2. Load balancing improvements provide better distribution algorithms and health checking.
3. Circuit breaking enhancements improve resilience during service failures.
4. Retry policies enable automatic request retries with configurable backoff strategies.

Security Enhancements

• TLS improvements provide better certificate management and automatic rotation.
• mTLS support enables mutual TLS for service-to-service communication.
• Rate limiting enhancements provide more sophisticated throttling strategies.
• Authentication improvements expand OAuth2, JWT, and API key support.

Performance & Scalability

• Connection handling optimizations reduce latency and improve throughput.
• Resource usage improvements reduce CPU and memory footprint.
• Scaling enhancements enable better handling of high-traffic scenarios.
• Caching improvements reduce backend load and improve response times.

Observability

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

Getting Started

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts
helm install traefik traefik/traefik --version 3.0.0 \
  --set gateway.enabled=true

Create a Gateway:

apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Gateway
metadata:
  name: my-gateway
spec:
  gatewayClassName: traefik
  listeners:
  - name: web
    protocol: HTTP
    port: 80

Summary

Traefik 3.0 establishes a new standard for ingress controllers, providing teams with modern routing capabilities and comprehensive security features.