Guidelines on choosing a CNI provider

There isn’t a single CNI vendor that can meet all of a project’s requirements. Flannel is an excellent option for easy setup and configuration. Calico has a superior performance because it employs a BGP underlay network. Cilium uses BPF to implement an entirely different application-layer filtering model that is more focused on enterprise security.

In the following table, we compare the three most popular CNI plugins:

Table 6.1 – Comparison of popular CNI plugins

Relying on a single CNI provider is unnecessary because operating requirements vary widely between projects. Multiple solutions will be used and tested to meet complicated networking requirements while also giving a more dependable networking experience. We’ll look at some of the most important factors to consider when selecting a CNI provider in the next section.

Key considerations when choosing a CNI provider

Calico, Flannel...