Why is Istio the most popular Service Mesh?

Istio stands for the Greek word ιστίο, pronounced as Iss-tee-oh. Istio means sail, which is a non-bending, non-compressing structure made of fabric or similar. It propels sailing ships via the lift and drag produced by the wind. What made the initial contributors select Istio as the name probably has something to do with the naming of Kubernetes, which also has a Greek origin, pronounced as koo-burr-net-eez and written as κυβερνήτης. Kubernetes means helmsman – that is, the person standing at the helm of a ship and steering it.

Istio is an open source services mesh distributed under Apache License 2.0. It is platform-independent, meaning it is independent of underlying Kubernetes providers. It also supports not only Kubernetes but also non-Kubernetes environments such as virtual machines. Having said that, Istio development is much more mature...