Contour 1.26: Envoy-Powered Ingress Evolution

Introduction

Contour 1.26, released on October 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 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.
• WAF integration improves protection against attacks.

Getting Started

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

Create a Gateway:

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

Summary

Contour 1.26 provides teams with powerful ingress capabilities using Envoy with improved Gateway API support and performance.