OSSEngineering Docs

/oss/en/narwhal/networking

Networking & Ingress

Cilium eBPF CNI, MetalLB L2 load balancing, APISIX API Gateway, and DNS.

Networking & Ingress

Narwhal combines eBPF-powered container networking with enterprise-grade API routing, removing legacy iptables bottlenecks.

eBPF Networking (Cilium)

Kube-proxy Replacement: O(1) service load balancing via eBPF maps without iptables rules
Host Routing: Kernel bypass across node-to-node packets reducing network latency by 30%
Fine-Grained NetworkPolicies: Layer 3, 4, and 7 isolation policies across namespaces

Traffic Ingress (MetalLB + APISIX)

MetalLB L2 Mode: Ingests external traffic at 192.168.56.200 and forwards to APISIX Gateway
Apache APISIX: SSL termination, Keycloak OIDC token introspection, rate limiting, and dynamic upstream proxying
Internal DNS: dnsmasq maps all *.local.narwhal.internal requests to 192.168.56.200