Service Mesh in 2021: Progress, Challenges, and Ecosystem Development

Service Mesh: A Core Cloud‑Native Technology

The concept of a service mesh has become widely accepted as a fundamental component of cloud‑native architectures. This article reviews the developments of service mesh in 2021, focusing primarily on Istio, which has become synonymous with the technology in China.

Evolution Stages

Service mesh has passed through three distinct phases: an exploration stage (2017‑2018), an early‑adopter stage (2019‑2020), and a large‑scale adoption and ecosystem‑growth stage beginning in 2021.

Community Adoption Gap

According to the “Crossing the Chasm” theory, service mesh has moved from the early‑majority to the late‑majority segment. Feedback from the “Istio Big Talk” audience shows that users are no longer blindly adopting the technology; they now critically evaluate whether a service mesh is truly needed.

Performance Optimization

Istio originally used IPtables hijacking for transparent traffic forwarding, adding only 3 ms latency for a 1 000 RPS workload on 16 connections. However, as mesh size grows, performance issues emerge. Community‑provided solutions include sidecar configuration reduction via operators, lazy‑load projects such as Slime and Aeraki , and the exploration of eBPF/Cilium to replace sidecar proxies.

Protocol Extension

Extending Istio involves both protocol‑level support for all seven OSI layers and ecosystem‑level plugin integration. Istio 1.12 introduced a Wasm plugin configuration API based on the Proxy‑Wasm ABI, enabling extensions written in AssemblyScript, C++, Rust, Zig, or Go (TinyGo).

Deployment Models

Historically, the sidecar model (Istio) competed with the per‑node model (Linkerd). The emergence of eBPF has added new deployment options, illustrated by a comparison of sidecar, proxyless, node‑level, and hybrid models.

Ecosystem Growth

2021 saw a vibrant Istio community: the release of Tetrate Istio Distro, the first IstioCon conference, free online tutorials, the Istio Administrator Certification (CIAT), ServiceMeshCon events in Europe and North America, and numerous meetups. Numerous open‑source projects such as Slime, Aeraki, and others expanded the mesh ecosystem.

Summary

Looking back, users increasingly demand practical service‑mesh solutions, reinforcing its position as the networking foundation of cloud‑native stacks. In 2022, eBPF and WebAssembly are expected to drive further innovation, with more real‑world cases and standardization efforts.

References

[1]

CNCF definition of cloud native – https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/main/DEFINITION.md [2] Crossing the Chasm – https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/crossing-the-chasm/ [3] Istio Big Talk – https://cloudnative.to/sig-istio/big-talk/overview.html [4] Do you really need a service mesh? – https://cloudnative.to/sig-istio/begin/before-you-begin.html [5] IPtables traffic hijacking – https://jimmysong.io/blog/envoy-sidecar-injection-in-istio-service-mesh-deep-dive/ [6] Community performance test – https://istio.io/latest/zh/blog/2019/performance-best-practices/ [7] Slime project – https://cloudnative.to/blog/smart-istio-management-plane-slime/ [8] Aeraki – https://github.com/aeraki-framework/aeraki [9] eBPF/Cilium sidecar replacement – https://cloudnative.to/blog/ebpf-solve-service-mesh-sidecar/ [10] Istio 1.12 Wasm API – https://cloudnative.to/blog/istio-wasm-extensions-and-ecosystem/ [11] Proxy‑Wasm ABI – https://github.com/proxy-wasm/spec [12] Tetrate Istio Distro – https://istio.tetratelabs.io/ [13] IstioCon 2021 – https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/ [14] Istio fundamentals tutorial – https://academy.tetrate.io/courses/istio-fundamentals-zh [15] Certified Istio Administrator – https://academy.tetrate.io/courses/certified-istio-administrator [28] Bye‑sidecar with eBPF – https://cloudnative.to/blog/ebpf-solve-service-mesh-sidecar/ [29] Slime introduction – https://cloudnative.to/blog/smart-istio-management-plane-slime/ [30] Istio Wasm extensions – https://cloudnative.to/blog/istio-wasm-extensions-and-ecosystem/ [31] GRPC proxyless mesh – https://cloudnative.to/blog/grpc-proxyless-service-mesh/ [32] How eBPF simplifies meshes – https://cloudnative.to/blog/how-ebpf-streamlines-the-service-mesh/ [33] Considerations before using Istio – https://cloudnative.to/sig-istio/begin/before-you-begin.html