loxilb is an open source cloud-native load-balancer based on GoLang/eBPF with the goal of achieving cross-compatibility across a wide range of on-prem, public-cloud or hybrid K8s environments.
Kubernetes defines many service constructs like cluster-ip, node-port, load-balancer etc for pod to pod, pod to service and service from outside communication.
All these services are provided by load-balancers/proxies operating at Layer4/Layer7. Since Kubernetes's is highly modular, these services can be provided by different software modules. For example, kube-proxy is used by default to provide cluster-ip and node-port services.
Service type load-balancer is usually provided by public cloud-provider(s) as a managed entity. But for on-prem and self-managed clusters, there are only a few good options available. Even for provider-managed K8s like EKS, there are many who would want to bring their own LB to clusters running anywhere. loxilb provides service type load-balancer as its main use-case. loxilb can be run in-cluster or ext-to-cluster as per user need.
Additionally, loxilb can also support cluster-ip and node-port services, thereby providing end-to-end connectivity for Kubernetes.
Performs
much better compared to its competitors across various architectures- Utitlizes ebpf which makes it
flexible
as well ascustomizable
- Advanced
quality of service
for workloads (per LB, per end-point or per client) - Works with
any
Kubernetes distribution/CNI - k8s/k3s/k0s/kind/OpenShift + Calico/Flannel/Cilium/Weave/Multus etc - Extensive support for
SCTP workloads
(with multi-homing) on K8s - Dual stack with
NAT66, NAT64
support for K8s - K8s
multi-cluster
support (planned π§) - Runs in
any
cloud (public cloud/on-prem) orstandalone
environments
- L4/NAT stateful loadbalancer
- NAT44, NAT66, NAT64 with One-ARM, FullNAT, DSR etc
- Support for TCP, UDP, SCTP (w/ multi-homing), QUIC, FTP, TFTP etc
- High-availability support with hitless/maglev/cgnat clustering
- Extensive and scalable end-point liveness probes for cloud-native environments
- Stateful firewalling and IPSEC/Wireguard support
- Optimized implementation for features like Conntrack, QoS etc
- Full compatibility for ipvs (ipvs policies can be auto inherited)
- Policy oriented L7 proxy support - HTTP1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc (planned π§)
- GoLang based control plane components
- A scalable/efficient eBPF based data-path implementation
- Integrated goBGP based routing stack
- A kubernetes agent kube-loxilb written in Go
loxilb works as a L4 load-balancer/service-mesh by default. Although it provides great performance, at times, L7 load-balancing might become necessary in K8s. There are many good L7 proxies already available for K8s. Still, we are working on providing a great L7 solution natively in eBPF. It is a tough endeavor one which should reap great benefits once completed. Please keep an eye for updates on this.
For deploying telco-cloud with cloud-native functions, loxilb can be used as a SCP(service communication proxy). SCP is nothing but a glorified term for Kubernetes load-balancing/proxy. But telco-cloud requires load-balancing across various interfaces/standards like N2, N4, E2(ORAN), S6x, 5GLAN, GTP etc. Each of these interfaces present its own unique challenges(and DPI) for load-balancing which loxilb aims to solve e.g.
- N4 requires PFCP level session-intelligence
- N2 requires NGAP parsing capability
- S6x requires Diameter/SCTP multi-homing LB support
- MEC use-cases might require UL-CL understanding
- Hitless failover support might be essential for mission-critical applications
- E2 might require SCTP-LB with OpenVPN bundled together
- How-To : Deploy in K8s with kube-loxilb
- How-To : Manual build/run
- How-To : Run loxilb in standalone mode
- How-To : Standalone configuration
- How-To : debug
- How-To : Run in K8s with calico
- How-To : High-availability with loxilb
Join the loxilb Slack channel to chat with loxilb developers and other loxilb users. This is a good place to learn about loxilb, ask questions, and work collaboratively.
Feel free to post your queries in github discussion. If you find any issue/bugs, please raise an issue in github and members from loxilb community will be happy to help.
- What is eBPF
- What is k8s service - load-balancer
- Architecture in brief
- Code organization
- eBPF internals of loxilb
- What are loxilb NAT Modes
- Developer's guide to loxicmd
- Developer's guide to loxilb API
- API Reference - loxilb web-Api
- Performance Reports
- Development Roadmap
- Contribute
- System Requirements
- Frequenctly Asked Questions- FAQs