CNCF Networking WG Proposal

Ken Owens

Objective

Explore cloud native networking technology and concepts around the container networking interface (CNI).

Recommend CNI be adopted as initial network interface specification focused on connectivity and portability as an official CNCF project.
Adopt implementations of CNI that have traction in the cloud native ecosystem
Define cloud native networking patterns
Define the Policy framework and network services model
A network plugin author should be able to write one “plugin” (a container) that “just works” across all container orchestration (CO) systems.
Enable container orchestrator to present network interfaces to the users in a portable manner that is focused on connectivity initially.
Support dynamic provisioning and deprovisioning network primitives through this interface.
Support group of entities that are uniquely addressable that can communicate amongst each other. This could be either an individual container, a machine, or some other network service (e.g. load balancing, firewall, VPN, QoS, Service Discovery). Containers can be conceptually added to or removed from one or* more networks.
Focused on cloud native application patterns. This includes VM-based, Bare metal based, and FaaS (TBD) based.
Define policy framework for network isolation

Provide or dictate an implementation.
This includes dictating plugin lifecycle management
Plugin distribution
Protocol-level authn/authz
Plugin discovery
Not going to make a one network standard for all
Not going to focus on individual projects per service but rather projects that model network services and patterns not going to be prescriptive but more reference guidelines and patterns