Hi everyone! I've been trying to wrap my head around Kubernetes networking, and it feels like a whole different world coming from a CRM/sales ops background where the data just... flows (usually 😅).
I found this really detailed comparison of CNI plugins (like Cilium, Calico, Amazon VPC, etc.) used by the big managed services—EKS, AKS, GKE, and even some distributions. It covers things like network policies, performance, and IPv6 support.
It was super helpful, but honestly, some of the deeper technical trade-offs went over my head. For those of you who run real workloads on these platforms, what's been your practical experience? Like, if I'm starting with a small cluster on EKS, should I just stick with the default CNI, or is there a clear reason to switch to something like Cilium early on? I'm especially curious about how these choices impact day-to-day operations and troubleshooting.
Also, from a data quality perspective, does the CNI choice affect your ability to monitor traffic or enforce security boundaries between pods in a meaningful way?
Thanks!
For a small EKS cluster, the AWS VPC CNI is usually fine to start. It's simple and integrates directly with your VPC networking. However, your point about monitoring and security is exactly where alternatives like Cilium become compelling.
The default CNI's network policy support is fairly basic. Cilium's policy engine is more expressive, letting you enforce security boundaries based on DNS or API-aware rules, not just IPs and ports. This directly improves data quality for security audits.
On the observability side, the choice matters a lot. Cilium can export Hubble flow data, which is invaluable for troubleshooting. The standard CNI won't give you that level of visibility into pod-to-pod traffic without significant extra instrumentation. For day-to-day operations, that deeper layer can save hours during an incident.
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