[eCHO News] Episode #112: The State of Kubernetes Networking. eBPF Trend Analysis

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

14th July 2026

Two surveys to talk about this week. First, Cong Wang's eBPF trend analysis shows that everything is up and to the right in the ecosystem. "eBPF's impact on modern infrastructure software shows no signs of slowing down, making it an essential technology to watch in the coming years."

And second, last year's inaugural State of Kubernetes Networking report uncovered the degree of tool sprawl in container networking, with respondents using an average of 6 tools across their environments. Nico and the team at Isovalent are running the survey again and I would expect it will show things like an increase in adoption of Gateway API, and more use cases for VMs on Kubernetes. The survey is open now and results will be published ahead of KubeCon North America in November.

Finally, this is my second to last eCHO Newsletter. I'll be taking a semi-batical to bike around the world. But don't worry the newsletter isn't going away! Katie has already been helping behind the scenes and now she will be running the show full time. If you are subscribed by email you don't have to do anything, but if you follow on LinkedIn, make sure to subscribe to the "new" newsletter here. I still have many things to pack up so let’s 🐝 -gin.

The Technical

Inside Cilium CNI: solving mysterious Kubernetes pod setup timeouts

How Adyen's Data Platform team resolved linear-time scaling bottlenecks

Research Update: Managing Server Power with eBPF (Part 2)

"eBPF can unlock new pathways towards efficient power management in servers"

eBPF reads your TLS traffic without the private key

The uprobe behind your L7 observability reads plaintext from memory

OS-level HTTP tagging for AI coding agents with eBPF, nftables & mitmproxy

Why you cannot enforce a coding agent's network policy with a prompt or an env var, and how to do it in the kernel instead

basarsubasi/beemon

Real-time Linux process monitoring

YashNandwana/qubit

eBPF-based service dependency mapper for Kubernetes

Agent-Hellboy/ltm

Machine-history debugger that records process, file, network, and I/O events from eBPF into SQLite

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The Ecosystem

Help Us Map The State of Kubernetes Networking in 2026

Are more teams running VMs on K8s? What kind of AI workloads do you run?

Securing CI/CD for open source, part 3: Credentials, verification & what’s next

How Cilium isolates CI credentials from production and what's next to secure

Community & Advocacy Fellowship

Teodor Podobnik wraps his eBPF Foundation fellowship with 4 new hands-on labs

eBPF Trend Analysis

Everything is up and to the right, are you suprised?

How eBPF Empowers Developers to Observe Inside the Linux Kernel in a Safe and Unintrusive Way

"I drive a car but I have no idea how the motor works. Use the tooling and try not to worry too much about eBPF"

Four years chasing a consistent eBee — and what I built when I finally caught one

Developing the open source pipeline behind the eBees

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The How To

How to Implement Zero-Trust Workload Identity in Kubernetes w SPIFFE, SPIRE & Cilium

How Cilium enforces mutual TLS with SPIFFE and no sidecar.

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The Video

When Kubeflow Fights Cilium: Debugging 60% Idle GPUs in Kubernetes

Adobe fixed its stalled GPUs without touching the Cilium cross zone policy

Cilium Gateway API for Kubernetes Explained

How Cilium handles Gateway API differently from every other controller

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The Events

ACM SOSP'26 Workshop on eBPF and Kernel Extensions

September 29th in Prague

Linux Plumbers Conference

October 5-7th in Prague, CfP open though July 24

CiliumCon

November 9 in Salt Lake City

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The Livestreams

eCHO Episode 211: Lab Preview: External Auth in Gateway API & Cilium

eCHO Episode 212: Let's explore Securing OpenClaw with Tetragon

eCHO Episode 212: Hands on Labs: Let's explore Securing OpenClaw with Tetragon

The Post of the Week

The last 4.5 years with Isovalent have been a ride on a rocket ship 🚀 but my favorite ride has always been on the bicycle 🚵‍♂️ Starting in August, I'll be going on a semi-batical (yes, Isovalent is cool like that) with my wife by bike around the world. I'll still be working a bit on the Cilium and eBPF communities and eBPF Foundation, but I'll be spending more time on the handlebars than hands on keyboard. I've stared a few of the places we plan on going in the first six months and would love to connect with the Cilium and eBPF communities there (looks like I already have a meetup lined up in South Korea). Reach out to me if you want to link up or if you have recommendations for where to go in the second six months 🐝 If you want to follow along on the journey, check out our Instagram https://lnkd.in/dH-BtUAP

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 and Katie Meinders. 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