Traefik 3.1: Gateway API Enhancements and Modern Routing

Introduction

Traefik 3.1, released on September 18, 2024, builds upon the Gateway API foundation introduced in 3.0 with enhanced support, improved routing capabilities, better security features, and performance optimizations. This release makes Traefik more powerful and easier to use for modern Kubernetes ingress.

Gateway API Enhancements

• Extended Gateway API support provides more complete implementation of Gateway API standards.
• HTTPRoute improvements enable more sophisticated routing rules and traffic management.
• TLSRoute enhancements provide better secure routing with automatic certificate management.
• BackendRef improvements enable better service and endpoint selection.

Routing Improvements

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 Features

• 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 Optimizations

• 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.

Getting Started

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts
helm install traefik traefik/traefik --version 3.1.0 \
  --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
  - name: websecure
    protocol: HTTPS
    port: 443
    tls:
      mode: Terminate
      certificateRefs:
      - name: my-cert

Summary

Traefik 3.1 continues to evolve as a leading ingress controller, providing teams with modern routing capabilities and comprehensive security features.