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Envoy Proxy Architecture

Envoy internals: listeners, routes, clusters, endpoints (LDS/RDS/CDS/EDS), filters, and the xDS management API.

🎯Key Takeaways
Listeners → Routes → Clusters → Endpoints
xDS: LDS (listeners), RDS (routes), CDS (clusters), EDS (endpoints)
Envoy admin API on :15000 exposes runtime config and stats

Envoy Proxy Architecture

Envoy internals: listeners, routes, clusters, endpoints (LDS/RDS/CDS/EDS), filters, and the xDS management API.

~1 min read
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What you'll learn
  • Listeners → Routes → Clusters → Endpoints
  • xDS: LDS (listeners), RDS (routes), CDS (clusters), EDS (endpoints)
  • Envoy admin API on :15000 exposes runtime config and stats

Envoy Config Model

Envoy config model: Listeners (accept connections on port), Routes (match request, forward to cluster), Clusters (group of upstream endpoints), Endpoints (individual backend addresses). Filters transform requests: HTTP filters (gzip, auth), network filters (TLS, rate limit). istiod pushes all config via xDS APIs.

Key takeaways

  • Listeners → Routes → Clusters → Endpoints
  • xDS: LDS (listeners), RDS (routes), CDS (clusters), EDS (endpoints)
  • Envoy admin API on :15000 exposes runtime config and stats

Suggested next

Often learned after this topic.

Istio Architecture: istiod & Data Plane

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