gateway-api VS caddy-l4

Compare gateway-api vs caddy-l4 and see what are their differences.

gateway-api

Repository for the next iteration of composite service (e.g. Ingress) and load balancing APIs. (by kubernetes-sigs)

caddy-l4

Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) app for Caddy (by mholt)
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gateway-api caddy-l4
29 20
1,529 749
5.7% -
9.8 7.2
4 days ago 18 days ago
Go Go
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

gateway-api

Posts with mentions or reviews of gateway-api. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-19.
  • ArgoCD Deployment on RKE2 with Cilium Gateway API
    2 projects | dev.to | 19 Feb 2024
    It has already been a couple of years since the Kubernetes Ingress was defined as a “frozen” feature while further development will be added to the Gateway API.
  • A Comprehensive Guide to API Gateways, Kubernetes Gateways, and Service Meshes
    9 projects | dev.to | 8 Jun 2023
    Kubernetes provides two APIs to achieve this, the Ingress API and the Gateway API.
  • Using k8s-apiserver as AAA server for microservices?
    4 projects | /r/kubernetes | 17 Feb 2023
    With all that said, K8s is not really meant to function as an API gateway to arbitrary services. You should look into API gateways such as NGINX, Kong or others, service meshes as others have already pointed out, or have a look at the K8s Gateway API the SIG is currently working on. The last one is in the early stages of adoption, but it could provide you with a nice way to do an API Gateway right in K8s.
  • load balancer and kubernetes
    3 projects | /r/aws | 23 Jan 2023
    Maybe there's something in the new fangled gateways.
  • Service Mesh Considerations
    7 projects | dev.to | 14 Dec 2022
    Keep an eye on the Gateway API GAMMA Initiative as it is currently evolving with the goal of streamlining how services meshes can implement the Gateway API and reduce some overlap.
  • Apache Apisix: Open-Source API Gateway and API Management Platform
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Sep 2022
    The selling point for me was ability to configure it using Kubernetes CRD's and future support of the Gateway API (under development - <https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io/>).

    Developers can version their API now within helm charts or even yaml templates held along the code in their repositories.

  • A quick glance at the Kubernetes Gateway API
    3 projects | dev.to | 7 Sep 2022
    -- https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io
    3 projects | dev.to | 7 Sep 2022
    k apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/gateway-api/releases/download/v0.5.0/standard-install.yaml
  • Sharing load balancers between containers
    2 projects | /r/kubernetes | 3 Sep 2022
    While you're learning about ingresses, also look into the k8s Gateway API, which is the next generation. https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io/
  • Exposing k8s services
    2 projects | /r/kubernetes | 16 Aug 2022
    The GatewayAPI model is quite different from the LB/ingress model, in the cluster it consists of gateway and route objects. Once the gateway is created routes connecting gateways to services are added. If you need to change how requests are distributed, the routes are updated but the gateway remains so the address and other configuration remains consistent. Gateways can be shared by multiple routes. Take a look at https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io/ its a bit terse but you will get the picture.

caddy-l4

Posts with mentions or reviews of caddy-l4. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-18.
  • Caddylike solution for SSH/SFTP
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 18 May 2023
    https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4 and https://github.com/kadeessh/kadeessh can do SSH forwarding.
  • Minecraft server with VPS as a proxy
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 8 Mar 2023
    3) Use a L4 TCP/UDP plugin for caddy. https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4
  • Nginx Reverse Proxy game hosting
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 9 Jan 2023
    Wireguard gives my service servers their own internal IP for the gateway to reference (nothing fancy done with it, no iptables modifications like you may see on other guides), and I use NGINX for the game server proxying, specifically linuxserver's nginx container. I love Caddy, but even with caddy-l4 I couldn't get it working right for Valheim (and thus UDP), but NGINX worked real quick.
  • Accessing an IP camera stream through caddy
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 20 Oct 2022
    This may help: https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4
  • The Future of Nginx: Getting Back to Our Open Source Roots
    12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Aug 2022
    Well, that's a bit off-topic from the parent comment, which was more about the Caddyfile supporting complex config (versus the underlying JSON config) and not really "complex usecases".

    But that said, from a quick Google search... was this an RTMP stream? If so, I suppose you'd want to use https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4 which is a plugin for Caddy that lets you do TCP-layer things. Caddy's standard distribution just ships an HTTP server (plus TLS and PKI, etc), which is layer-7

    You might be able to use caddy-l4's "tee" handler to pipe into multiple "proxy" handlers. But I'm not sure anyone's tried this yet, I had no idea people did this sort of thing. I'd be interested to hear if it does work though.

  • Brand new to this, have a few questions about DDNS, reverse proxies, etc
    2 projects | /r/selfhosted | 18 Jun 2022
    If you are only having your services accessible via LAN, HTTPS isn't totally necessary, but I would still recommend it. I think a reverse proxy will be easier than your described method. Just set it to listen to 443 and have all of your other services on random ports being proxied from the reverse proxy. If you want HTTPS from your reverse proxy to your services, most reverse proxies will have this kind of feature. Here is the caddy L4 raw TCP stream module: https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4
  • Alternative to SRV record?
    3 projects | /r/selfhosted | 23 May 2022
    I had a similar problem a while back and found this project (Caddy-L4). It had no releases or examples on how to build it so I forked it and added some Docker stuff.
  • Show HN: Caddy v2.5.0
    13 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Apr 2022
    "Caddy L4" aka "Project Conncept" might be what you're looking for:

    https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4

    "Project Conncept is an experimental layer 4 app for Caddy. It facilitates composable handling of raw TCP/UDP connections based on properties of the connection or the beginning of the stream."

  • I'm Using SNI Proxying and IPv6 to Share Port 443 Between Webapps
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 23 Apr 2022
    Nice, this is kind of why I made Project Conncept. It's a powerful TCP and UDP stream multiplexer based on Caddy: https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4

    You can route raw TCP connections by using higher layer protocol matching logic like HTTP properties, SSH, TLS ClientHello info, and more, in composable routes that let you do nearly anything.

  • Show HN: Caddy-SSH
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 Mar 2022
    I guess, except Caddy doesn't spawn any processes, it just "starts apps" which are configured in-process.

    Another example Caddy app is https://github.com/mholt/caddy-l4 which lets you do arbitrary TCP/UDP handling/proxying.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing gateway-api and caddy-l4 you can also consider the following projects:

authelia - The Single Sign-On Multi-Factor portal for web apps

apisix-opa-plugin

kubernetes-ingress-controller - :gorilla: Kong for Kubernetes: The official Ingress Controller for Kubernetes.

tyk-operator - Tyk Operator for Kubernetes

ingress - WIP Caddy 2 ingress controller for Kubernetes

caddy-ssh - Caddy-SSH is a general-purpose, extensible, modular, memory-safe SSH server built in Go [Moved to: https://github.com/kadeessh/kadeessh]

caddy-docker-proxy - Caddy as a reverse proxy for Docker

OPA (Open Policy Agent) - Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general-purpose policy engine.

multus-cni - A CNI meta-plugin for multi-homed pods in Kubernetes

nginx-proxy - Automated nginx proxy for Docker containers using docker-gen

cert-manager - Automatically provision and manage TLS certificates in Kubernetes

frp - A fast reverse proxy to help you expose a local server behind a NAT or firewall to the internet.