Cilium Has a Free API — eBPF-Powered Networking for Kubernetes

Cilium is the CNCF networking project that uses eBPF to provide networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes. It powers networking at companies like Google, AWS, and Datadog. Cilium exposes a free API for managing network policies, endpoints, and service maps — all without iptables. Why Use the Cilium API? eBPF networking — kernel-level packet processing, no iptables overhead Network policies — L3/L4/L7 policies with DNS and HTTP awareness Service mesh — built-in service mesh without sidecars Hubble observability — real-time flow visibility (see companion article) Quick Setup 1. Install Cilium cilium install cilium status --wait 2. Check Cluster Status cilium status # Shows: agent health, operator health, cluster connectivity # Via API curl -s --unix-socket /var/run/cilium/cilium.sock http://localhost/v1/healthz | jq '.overall' 3. List Endpoints # All endpoints (pods) managed by Cilium curl -s --unix-socket /var/run/cilium/cilium.sock \ http://localhost/v1/endpoints | jq '.[]