Traefik

Traefik is a cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer designed for modern microservices and container platforms. It automatically discovers services from orchestrators and configures routing, TLS, and middlewares with minimal manual configuration.

Key Features:

• Dynamic configuration via providers (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, Consul, etcd, file) with automatic service discovery
• HTTP/HTTPS routing with host/path rules, priorities, and weighted load balancing
• Automatic TLS with ACME (e.g., Let’s Encrypt), including certificate management and renewal
• Middleware pipeline for common edge concerns (redirects, headers, basic auth, IP allow/deny, rate limiting, retries, circuit breakers)
• TCP and UDP routing for non-HTTP workloads
• Integrated observability: access logs, metrics (Prometheus/others), tracing (OpenTelemetry/Jaeger/Zipkin depending on setup)
• Traefik dashboard/API for inspecting routers, services, middlewares, and health
• Canary/blue-green style rollouts via traffic splitting and weights

Use Cases:

• Ingress/controller for Kubernetes clusters to expose services securely with automated TLS
• Reverse proxy for Docker Compose homelabs to route multiple apps by hostname
• Edge gateway for microservices needing centralized routing, auth/headers, and rate limiting

Limitations and Considerations:

• Several advanced capabilities (e.g., richer policy/governance, enterprise-grade features) are offered in Traefik’s commercial products rather than the core proxy

Traefik is widely adopted as a default edge component for containerized environments, reducing manual proxy configuration through provider-driven discovery. It fits particularly well where services are frequently added/removed and TLS and routing rules need to be managed declaratively.