Evaluating CNI Plugins Features & Tradeoffs for Edge Cloud Applications
G. Koukis, Sotiris Skaperas, Ioanna Angeliki Kapetanidou, Lefteris Mamatas, Vassilis Tsaoussidis · 2024
Kubernetes (K8s) has become the cornerstone solution for orchestrating containerized applications across cloud-edge computing environments. Container Network Interface (CNI) plugins are crucial in this ecosystem, enabling network connectivity among K8s components, supporting advanced features and facilitating robust network management across diverse environments, such as centralized cloud or decentralized edge locations. In this paper, we extend our previous work, focusing on the various features, either built-in or non-native, provided within each networking solution and across diverse resource-intense and lightweight K8s distributions. Along these lines, tunneling options, security and encryption mechanisms, as well as common service mesh and observability tools have been evaluated with regards to their performance and resource utilization.