What is Envoy Proxy?
Envoy is an open-source L7(Layer7) proxy and Load Balancer. It stands between the internet and backend infrastructure. When you visit a web app the first place your request will go to a web server its job is to look at the requested resource and determine where to find it on the server and send it back as a response.
If you open the chrome dev-tool you cloud to see a server under the header section.
Many times you would find Nginx, which is extremely popular for high traffic sites because it can handle 1000 simultaneous connections with its event Driven Architecture. Even Envoy has more to its Architecture
Proxy?
A proxy is a middle man between the Client and the server. As it takes requests from the client-side and passes them to the server. The server sends back the desired content for the request. There are two types of proxies Reverse and forward Proxy.
But, What is Layer7 🤔 ?
Layer 7 is a part of Computer Networking Architecture. Whose Architecture has 7 Layers.
At Point Layer1 we have the physical hardware. Like fibre Optic Wire the carries light from point A to point B. This Light Travels to Layer7. Then it is transmitted directly to the computer as an end-user accessing this Blog over HTTP(hyper Text Transfer Protocol). On addition, there are many other protocols on Layer 7. SMPT for email, FTP for file transfer and SNMP for collecting and organizing the information about managed devices
Layer 6 is the presentation layer it works as a translator to ensure a stream of bits from a computer is encoded into a standard format that can be used in the Application Layer.
Layer 5 is the session layer that manages the connection between two computers, At this layer, we can find User Authentication and Authorization to check whether or not the user have the access to data on the server.
The middle layer or layer 4 the Transport layer, The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or UDP is the foundation of the computer network. Its job is to take the data from one computer and transfer it to another and even the error checking of data packets.
Layer 3 the Network Layer here we can find the Internet Protocol (IP ) every computer connected to the network has its unique IP address which identifies that computer and whenever it sends information over the network it does so in the form of an IP packet that contains the address and the header. A packet is a unit of data along with some information about who sent it this happens through the router or the Gateway which connects us to Layer 2 the Data its role is to connect one physical node to network to another via protocols like ethernet or wi-fi.
What is a Load Balancer?
It is a distribution of network traffic across the group of backend Server also called a Server Pool.
Uses of Envoy Proxy
- Used Directly by End User
- Used As API gateway in Edge Proxy
- Sidecar Proxy in Service Mesh
- Used as a Middle Proxy as a stand-alone server
- Used in Bare Metal
- As a Daemon Set .... and many more depending on the industry requirements.
It is been used widely by
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