service mesh

/SUR-vis mesh/ · noun · Development · Origin: 2017

Definitions

  1. A dedicated infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication in microservice architectures, implemented as a network of lightweight proxies (sidecars) deployed alongside each service. Service meshes provide mutual TLS, load balancing, circuit breaking, and observability without requiring changes to application code. Istio, Linkerd, and Consul Connect are major implementations.

    In plain English: An invisible network layer that manages how microservices talk to each other, handling encryption, retries, and traffic control automatically.

    Example: After adopting the service mesh, we got mutual TLS between all 200 microservices without changing a single line of application code.

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