Technology · Ebook

Kuadrant: Policy-Driven API Gateways for Kubernetes

by Shriira Press

Kuadrant is a CNCF sandbox project that extends the Kubernetes Gateway API into a complete connectivity, security, and policy framework for API gateways. Rather than hand-configuring Envoy filters or stitching together rate limiters, auth servers, DNS, and TLS by hand, Kuadrant exposes those concerns as declarative custom resources — RateLimitPolicy, AuthPolicy, DNSPolicy, and TLSPolicy — that attach to Gateways and HTTPRoutes. Underneath, the Rust-based Limitador enforces limits and Authorino handles authentication and authorization, both wired into Istio or Envoy Gateway through a WebAssembly shim. This book covers the Gateway API foundation, the control- and data-plane architecture, each policy in depth, the defaults-and-overrides model, multi-cluster topology with global rate limiting, observability, and practical adoption.

Contents

1. 1Preface
2. 2Chapter 1 — What Kuadrant Is
3. 3Chapter 2 — The Gateway API Foundation
4. 4Chapter 3 — Architecture: Control Plane and Data Plane
5. 5Chapter 4 — Rate Limiting with Limitador
6. 6Chapter 5 — Authentication and Authorization with Authorino
7. 7Chapter 6 — DNS and TLS Policies
8. 8Chapter 7 — Defaults, Overrides, and Policy Attachment
9. 9Chapter 8 — Going Multi-Cluster
10. 10Chapter 9 — Observability and Operations
11. 11Chapter 10 — Kuadrant in Practice