KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2024

In Kubernetes 1.31, a new TrafficDistribution field on Services graduated to beta. This is effectively our third attempt at solving Topology Aware Routing in Kubernetes. This talk will tell the story of how we got here and what we learned along the way, outlining what exactly has made this problem so surprisingly complex. With that context, we’ll dive into exactly how Traffic Distribution works today, and when you should configure it. You’ll learn about how it’s implemented today, and how better implementations may be written in the future. We'll walk through some examples to show how it can work well, and when it may not. Finally, we’ll cover how this concept will interact with autoscaling, load balancers, Ingresses, Gateways, and Multi-Cluster Services. You should leave this talk with a clear understanding of how Topology Aware Routing works in Kubernetes, when to use it, and a broad awareness of the work that’s still in progress in this space.