Cloud Native Networking Deep-Dive

This book demystifies how Kubernetes networking actually works by walking through a simple but practical simulation that mirrors reality as closely as possible, while skipping the gory details.

Widespread adoption of container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes have spawned a whole field of industry products, startups and academic research in the field of container networking, typically termed as cloud-native networking. But, what is cloud-native networking? What are the various pieces and how do they fit together?

Over recent years, most applications have been deployed on cloud infrastructure. Kubernetes has been the widely adopted orchestrator for these clouds. Application developers in most cases are unaware of the underlying plumbing in Kubernetes that holds their applications running as containers. Networking is an integral part of any Kubernetes environment and efficiently drives the various abstractions provided by it. Needless to say, it greatly effects the performance of applications, which in general have a humongous amount of inter-microservice communication. The impact is even more profound in multiple cloud environments.

Chander Govindarajan is a Research Engineer at IBM Research, India with 5 years’ experience in the field of systems ranging from Blockchain, Telco-Cloud and multi-cloud networking, working in the intersection of academic research and business interests. Prior to joining IBM Research, he completed his Dual-Degree in CSE from IIT Kharagpur.

Priyanka Naik is a Research Scientist at IBM Research, India. Her area of interest lies in optimizing the deployment of containerized network functions. She is currently working on multi-cloud networking and aspects around frameworks for edge and cloud connectivity. Prior to joining IBM she obtained her Ph.D. from IIT Bombay, India. Her thesis revolved around easing building and monitoring of network functions deployed on cloud.