What is Network Service Mesh and Why Do We Need It?

You love Kubernetes, right? I don’t use it personally because that’s not my job, but when I talk to someone who does, the experience they describe sounds nothing less than fabulous. By automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized apps, it has eliminated a lot of the repetitive work that was previously falling into the laps of all kinds of IT professionals that were not terribly interested in spending their days on repetitive work.

Sounds like all kinds of sunshine and rainbows, right?

Right. If you’re part of the Layer 4-7 crowd.

If however, you spend your time taking care of business on lower layers, like Layer 2 or 3, Kubernetes leaves you with some loose ends. It’s not that it does things poorly in that realm—it’s just that it doesn’t address them at all, which is something of a problem if you’re a service provider that wants to use Kubernetes or say, an enterprise looking for secure internet connectivity between your intranet and a pod in Kubernetes.

That’s where Network Service Mesh comes in. It aims to fill that gap by providing a Service Mesh-like experience, but with Layer 2 and Layer 3 payloads. That’s as far as I’ll go with the explanation, because Ed Warnicke and Frederick Kautz are truly more qualified and more eloquent in their explanations of it, and they are the featured guests on this week’s episode of the Cloud Unfiltered podcast. Trust me—you’ll truly enjoy listening to these two. Specifically, some of what they’ll cover in this engaging discussion includes:

• What problem the Network Service Mesh project is setting out to solve
• Why Ed says “Cloud” is just another word for “I don’t want to have to care”
• How ideally this technology will turn developers’ very abstract desires into consistent, predictable outcomes
• Who is going to benefit most from Network Service Mesh
• How to get involved in the project
• Why they are both so fond of Go, and whether you have to know it to contribute

Click on the episode below to watch it right now on YouTube, or better yet–download it from iTunes or SoundCloud so you can listen to it in the car on the way home from work.

Want to check out past episodes? Visit the archive at and take a look at what we’ve got. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll find one in there that speaks to you.

Share