[eCHO News] Episode #103: Cilium 1.19 Release Blog. eBPF on Hard Mode

eCHO news is your bi-weekly wrap up of all things eBPF and Cilium. If you want to keep up on the latest in cloud native networking, observability, and security this is your quelle

10th March 2026

This is the last newsletter before KubeCon and as a subscriber I want to give you a little sneak preview of what I've been working on for Amsterdam. First, besides O'Reilly Cilium Up and Running, I will also be releasing The Illustrated Children's Guide to Cilium. Stop by the Isovalent booth to get your signed copy. If you are a fan of Star Wars be sure to show up to the keynotes early to catch the Cilium project update ;)

Finally, on the actual technical side, we will be releasing a blog about native sidecarless mTLS finally coming to Cilium through the integration of ztunnel. Besides that I have three talks and my first ever keynote (even if Cisco had to pay for it). I'm sandwiching this newsletter between bikepacking and ski trips and have some gear to clean so let’s 🐝 -gin.

The Technical

Cilium 1.19, Network Policy enhancements, Multi Pool IPAM goes stable, IPv6 progress, and more!

10 years in and the innovation engine is still going strong with the latest release

eBPF on Hard Mode

"using BPF without libbpf/LLVM/GCC (i.e. rawdogging bytecode)"

Multi AZ by Default, Local by Design, Cutting Cross Zone Traffic With Cilium

Your CFO will thank you

ErenAri/Aegis-BPF

CO-RE runtime that tracks process lineage, audits or enforces path- based deny

josefbacik/systing

A libbpf based tracer to help figure out what an application is doing

melonattacker/logira

Observe-only Linux CLI that records runtime exec, file, and net events via eBPF

erayack/vantage

Kernel-level per-tenant admission controller built with Rust and eBPF

nebulis-proxmox/tailscale-vips-loopback

Allow for loopback over packets intended for locally-hosted Tailscale services

yairfalse/rauha
Modern container runtime implements Solaris-style "Zones" using eBPF LSM

hown3d/siit-ebpf

Stateless IP/ICMP Translation using eBPF

vakalapa/ferroproxy

eBPF-based transparent proxy that intercepts matching network traffic and redirects it through an Envoy proxy (port 15088) on the same node

🐝

The Ecosystem

AI makes networking matter again

"Once computers replaced humans, network latency and throughput suddenly became a competitive differentiator"

Get off the never-ending vulnerability piñata that is Ingress NGINX

Or why you should look at Gateway API

Case Study: OVHCloud

"Many users want the ability to choose their CNI during cluster creation, and Cilium is the clear leader in this space"

Case Study: Zynga

"With Cilium, in one implementation, we would be getting the CNI and replacing kube-proxy, plus Cluster Mesh, service mesh, Gateway API, Hubble for observability, and network policies for restricting traffic"

Extending Infrastructure Fabric: The Journey to Cloud-Native Isovalent Networking

Or how Isovalent fits into the Cisco portfolio

One Cluster, Proper Isolation: Reconciling Blast Radius and Operational Reality

By leveraging Cilium network policies and Tetragon

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The How To

Building a Minimal Service Mesh with eBPF and Envoy

including eBPF socket acceleration

Transparent Egress Proxy with eBPF and Envoy

From iptables to eBPF with Teodor

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The Video

Resolving Performance and Security Issues with eBPF

From DevConf.IN 2026

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The Events

CiliumCon EU

Schedule out now!

ACM SOSP'26 Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions

September 29th in Prague, CfP open

🐝

The Livestreams

eCHO Episode 202: Exploring New Features in Cilium 1.19

eCHO Episode 203: eBPF Hookpoint Gotchas

The Post of the Week

The call for papers for the hashtag#eBPF'26 workshop is open: https://lnkd.in/ee4gvHhv. This year, the workshop will be hosted by the ACM hashtag#SOSP conference, the top academic conference in OS research, happening in Prague in late September! The deadline for submissions is June 19th, in just over 4 months.

As always, if you’ve seen a blog post, a tool, or anything else eBPF or Cilium related that you think the rest of the community should hear about, send them my way. You can either hit reply or join the #echo-news channel on Cilium Slack. You can also find all of the past episodes on the website.

🐝

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Written and sent by Bill Mulligan. Any feedback is welcome!

LF_KCCNC_headshot_251113_Bill_Mulligan_9686

I work for Isovalent at Cisco which is leading the eBPF-Powered Revolution in Cloud Native Networking, Observability, and Security with Cilium and Tetragon