Tutorial: Measure Twice, Cut Once: Dive Into Network Foundations the Right Way!

The conference presentation is about a workshop on network foundations for cloud-native ecosystems, with a focus on Kubernetes and related technologies.

• Understanding how data moves between applications is critical for performance, security, and efficiency
• CoreDNS, Envoy, Istio, CNI, and Cilium are important cloud-native networking tools
• The workshop covers topics such as packet flow, network communication tracking, DNS, service mesh, and container networking
• The OSI model is used to understand how data moves around a network
• The workshop consists of seven modules covering different aspects of networking
• The presenters provide a sandbox environment for participants to follow along with the workshop

The presenters share their personal motivations for creating the workshop, including struggling to learn Istio and understanding the importance of networking for container systems. They also emphasize the need for foundational knowledge in networking to better understand Kubernetes and related technologies.

Networking is the foundation of distributed computing, especially in cloud-native ecosystems. Your awareness of how data moves between applications is critical for understanding their performance, security, and efficiency. As many microservices are built and deployed onto container systems like Kubernetes, it’s key to understand where traffic goes, how to communicate with your applications, how to decipher network protocols, and the various transactions that could be present. CoreDNS, Envoy, Istio, CNI, and Cilium and cloud-native networking tools offer many advantages, but in failure conditions, they require a deep understanding of the Linux networking stack. This workshop will prepare you to navigate networks and develop expertise in the networking technologies found throughout KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. Taking this workshop will help you to answer the questions: - What does a packet look like? - How does it flow into your microservices? - How do you track network communications? - Why do you need DNS? - How does a service mesh enhance your microservices network? - What does the shift away from IPtables toward eBPF mean for network performance?