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Cilium’s Gateway API implementation isn’t just a replacement; it’s an upgrade that brings a host of benefits, from enhanced traffic control to streamlined operations. Advanced traffic management: Native support for header-based routing, traffic splitting, and cross-namespace routes. Unified traffic management (GAMMA): Leverage a single, consistent API (Gateway API) to manage both external (north-south) ingress traffic and internal (east-west) service mesh traffic, simplifying operations and policy enforcement. Role separation: Decouple infrastructure from application routing for better secur

With ingress-nginx entering retirement, platform teams face a choice: keep a critical control-plane component without upstream maintenance, or move to an actively supported alternative. The Kubernetes community has aligned on the Gateway API as the long-term standard for traffic management. That direction shapes your two primary migration paths: Move to another ingress controller (such as Cilium Ingress, Traefik, or HAProxy Ingress). Adopt the Kubernetes Gateway API, the next-generation standard for ingress and traffic management, using a controller like Cilium Gateway API. Cilium offers both

While Ingress has served us well, its design inherently limits advanced traffic management. The Gateway API, especially with Cilium’s implementation, unlocks a new level of control and flexibility. This table highlights some key areas where Gateway API goes beyond what traditional Ingress can offer, providing more robust and granular control over your traffic flows.

Most teams start with Cilium Ingress to remove the maintenance risk immediately, then move to the Gateway API as their routing and organizational needs evolve. If your platform already separates infrastructure and application teams, Gateway API will feel natural from the start. If your environment is smaller or less complex, Cilium Ingress offers the fastest path to replace ingress-nginx with minimal change. A practical migration plan: Document current behaviour: Capture hosts, paths, TLS, health checks, and any NGINX annotations. Select a target: Choose Cilium Ingress for quick replacement,