Every service mesh, including Istio, uses a sidecar proxy as its data plane. With this pattern, a mesh can intercept and enhance the capability of networking communication on behalf of an application. However, this sidecar deployment pattern comes with a set of challenges which include operational cost and complexity. With the advent of eBPF in modern kernels and some coordination with the Linux networking capabilities, we can remove the need to have a sidecar and adopt a transparent approach. In this talk, we dive into the future of Istio to show how Istio can run in an ambient mode while maintaining the features of Istio running in a standard mode.

Benefits: the top concerns we address with sidecar-less mode are simplified operational and management overhead, broader application compatibility, reduced infrastructure costs, and improved performance.