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MCP Traffic Handling at Scale: Stateless Design, Proxies, and the Road Ahead - Erica Hughberg, Tetrate & Boteng Yao, Google#

MCP Dev Summit North America 2026 digest Program Core pick 2–3 April 2026

Abstract

Erica Hughberg, Envoy AI Gateway Maintainer, Tetrate; Boteng Yao, Senior Envoy Maintainer, Google

  • Why: The data-plane view of MCP — session management across fleets, policy enforcement for agents, proxy architecture. This is the talk that maps agent infrastructure onto classic proxy/load-balancer concerns.
  • What: How proxies currently handle stateful MCP sessions, how stateless designs dramatically simplify scaling and operations, and how proxies like Envoy enforce authorization, tool safety, and policy without becoming bottlenecks; plus a forward look at emerging proposals (stateless transports, async tasks, server discovery) and why protocol/proxy alignment matters (from abstract only).
  • How: Proxy-level session handling and policy enforcement via Envoy and Envoy AI Gateway, evolving in step with the protocol's stateless direction.
  • Where applicable: Anyone fronting MCP servers with a gateway; Envoy-centric (speakers are Envoy maintainers) but the session-state and policy-enforcement mechanics generalize to any proxy stack.