Behind the Scenes of Building a Gateway API Dataplane... Norwin Schnyder & Huabing (Robin) Zhao

Norwin Schnyder and Huabing Zhao analyze how different Gateway API implementations translate resources into Envoy configurations using xDS.

Don't miss out! Join us at our next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event in Salt Lake City, United States (Nov 9–12, 2026). Connect with our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. Learn more at kubecon.io Behind the Scenes of Building a Gateway API Dataplane With Envoy Proxy - Norwin Schnyder, Airlock & Huabing (Robin) Zhao, tetrate.io Kubernetes Gateway API has become the standard for traffic management in cloud-native environments, with Envoy Proxy emerging as the dominant data plane across implementations. Despite sharing the same proxy, implementations differ in how they translate Gateway API resources into Envoy configuration and distribute it via xDS. This talk analyzes those differences in depth, covering the trade-offs between State-of-the-World and Delta xDS, how ADS ordering guarantees help achieve hitless configuration rollouts and where they still fall short, and how MuxCache can decouple reconciliation in the controller. We’ll also look at how control planes model backends and routes and what that means for scale, policy attachment, observability, and operational safety. Drawing on hands-on experience building a Gateway API data plane, you'll leave with lessons learned and actionable insights, whether you're building or operating a Gateway API implementation or evaluating one for production.