For years, the Ingress API has been the standard way to expose applications running in Kubernetes. As deployments became more sophisticated, however, Ingress often relied on controller-specific annotations and custom extensions, making traffic management difficult to understand, maintain, and standardize across environments.

The Gateway API was created to address these challenges. As the next generation of Kubernetes traffic management, it provides a more expressive, extensible, and role-oriented approach to routing traffic into and within clusters.

This session offers a practical introduction to the Gateway API for platform engineers, developers, and Kubernetes users who want to understand the new standard without getting lost in the terminology. We will explore the core concepts behind GatewayClass, Gateway, and Routes, and see how they enable a clear separation of responsibilities between cluster administrators and application teams.

Through straightforward examples and comparisons with the traditional Ingress model, attendees will learn why the Gateway API was introduced, how it differs from Ingress, and how it simplifies the management of modern Kubernetes networking. By the end of the session, participants will have a solid foundation for understanding and adopting the Gateway API in their own environments.