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Life of a Packet in Kubernetes: A Network Engineer's Guide - BRKCLD-3734#

Cisco Live US 2026 (Las Vegas) digest Program Core pick Las Vegas · 31 May – 4 June 2026

Abstract

Nico Vibert (Cisco)

  • Why: A datapath-internals walkthrough of Kubernetes networking using Isovalent Cilium — squarely on this PM's core cloud-native interests (eBPF, Gateway API, overlays, BGP).
  • What: A full trace of a packet through a Kubernetes cluster — across nodes, overlays, policy, and egress — using Cilium as the dataplane, with live demos (from abstract only).
  • How: Unpacks VXLAN/Geneve overlays, Gateway API, Egress Gateway, BGP routing, IPsec encryption, Direct Server Return, multi-cluster Cluster Mesh, plus performance features BIG TCP and topology-aware traffic engineering; observability via Hubble, Cilium CLI, and Wireshark.
  • Where applicable: Cilium/Isovalent-centric but the K8s networking constructs (Gateway API, CNI, multicluster) are vendor-neutral; advanced session, assumes routing/overlay/LB fluency.