CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cloudmicroservicesapi-gateway
Jorgeblom
Jorgeblom

Reputation: 3578

Service-to-service communication: API Gateway vs. Service Mesh

AFAIK:

But I cannot find a good explanation (and bibliography) explaining why using API Gateway (such as Apigee) is not suitable for inter-process communication.

Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 637

Answers (4)

Nitin Gaur
Nitin Gaur

Reputation: 1126

API Gateway is not right tool for inter-service communication because the need is different. As someone rightly answered API Gateway is for North-South and service mesh is for East-West communication. API Gateway mediates every API call whereas this is not required in inter-service communication. If you try to implement APIGW for internal services, it will cost you more and also degrade the performance.

Upvotes: 1

Ayman Arif
Ayman Arif

Reputation: 1679

API Gateway: It is the first entry-point for request coming towards downstream APIs/services. It is responsible for API management. It handles only L7 (HTTP) routing capability.

Service Mesh: Uses a side-car pattern to sideline non-business logic concerns (TLS, Circuit breaker pattern .etc.) away from your running application. It has L4/L7 routing capability.

Check the decision tree for better understanding: API cs SM

Upvotes: 1

ancatrusca
ancatrusca

Reputation: 11

The difference is mainly a structural one as noted here:

"The service mesh pattern primarily focuses on handling traditionally what has been referred to as "east-west" remote procedure call (RPC)-based traffic: request/response type communication that originates internally within a datacenter and travels service-to-service. This is in contrast to an API gateway or edge proxy, which is designed to handle "north-south" traffic: Communication that originates externally and ingresses to an endpoint or service within the datacenter."

More information on this website

Upvotes: 1

Vaibhav Jain
Vaibhav Jain

Reputation: 19

You might want to use Apigee Adapter for Istio. it provides features like traffic management, security and monitoring.

Link - https://docs.apigee.com/api-platform/istio-adapter/concepts

Upvotes: 0

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