{"id":2168,"date":"2025-07-17T08:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T08:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2026-01-09T05:53:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T05:53:30","slug":"cilium-vs-aws-cni-latency-kubernetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/cilium-vs-aws-cni-latency-kubernetes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cilium CNI vs AWS CNI: A Fresh Perspective on Latency in Kubernetes Networking"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"2168\" class=\"elementor elementor-2168\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-72b2ee59 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"72b2ee59\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-36684a81\" data-id=\"36684a81\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-45d61093 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"45d61093\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n<p>As Kubernetes continues to dominate enterprise infrastructure, networking performance becomes a critical concern, especially when using service meshes like Istio or implementing zero-trust policies with mTLS. Many DevOps and platform engineering teams are considering Cilium CNI. Earlier in our blog, we covered <a href=\"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/cilium-cni-vs-istio-service-mesh-best-for-kubernetes-network\/\">Cilium vs. Istio for network management.<\/a> In this blog, we will compare two crucial CNIs (Cilium and AWS; now it is apples to apples) for defining security policies in your network.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<p>In our latest IMESH experiment (conducted on 28th June 2025), we tested <strong>Cilium CNI<\/strong> against <strong>AWS VPC CNI<\/strong> in multiple realistic scenarios to measure latency trade-offs.<\/p>\n\n<p>This blog delves into what we discovered and its implications for DevOps teams evaluating their CNI strategy.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Cilium vs AWS CNI: What We Wanted to Find Out?<\/h2>\n\n<p>While Cilium is gaining adoption due to its eBPF-based architecture, programmable security policies, and advanced observability, AWS VPC CNI remains the go-to for simplicity, compatibility, and predictable performance in Amazon EKS.<\/p>\n\n<p>Our goal was to understand:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How Cilium performs vs AWS CNI across different deployment setups<\/li>\n\n<li>What the latency looks like with and without Istio and mTLS<\/li>\n\n<li>When it&#8217;s worth switching to Cilium\u2014and when it&#8217;s not<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Test Setup &amp; Methodology<\/h2>\n\n<p>We used <strong>four clusters on AWS<\/strong>, each running a different network configuration:<\/p>\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Cluster 1<\/strong>: AWS VPC CNI only<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Cluster 2<\/strong>: Cilium CNI only (no kube-proxy, no AWS VPC CNI)<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Cluster 3<\/strong>: Cilium CNI + AWS CNI (no kube-proxy)<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Cluster 4<\/strong>: Cilium CNI + AWS CNI + kube-proxy<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Workload &amp; Tools<\/strong>:<\/h3>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Service<\/strong>: HTTPbin with one replica<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Load Generator<\/strong>: Fortio (v1.69.5), 100 QPS, 10 connections, for 10 seconds<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Node Specs<\/strong>: C7g.large (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM)<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Istio version<\/strong>: 1.26.2<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Cilium version<\/strong>: 1.17.5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>Each configuration was tested under three traffic patterns:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Without Istio<\/li>\n\n<li>With Istio (no mTLS)<\/li>\n\n<li>With Istio + mTLS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Latency Results Snapshot (p90\/p99 in ms)<\/h2>\n\n<p>The table below represents the p90 and p99 latency results after the test was carried out on AWS and Cilium CNI.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"318\" class=\"wp-image-2169\" src=\"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cilium-vs-AWS-CNI-latency-results-as-per-July-2025.jpeg\" alt=\"Cilium vs AWS CNI latency results as per July 2025\" srcset=\"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cilium-vs-AWS-CNI-latency-results-as-per-July-2025.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cilium-vs-AWS-CNI-latency-results-as-per-July-2025-300x119.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cilium-vs-AWS-CNI-latency-results-as-per-July-2025-768x305.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Cilium-vs-AWS-CNI-latency-results-as-per-July-2025-400x159.jpeg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What the Data Tells Us About Cilium CNI and AWS CNI<\/h2>\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>AWS VPC CNI consistently had the lowest latency<\/strong> across all traffic types, especially in the no-Istio scenario.<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Cilium-only setup had the highest latency<\/strong>, particularly under mTLS conditions.<\/li>\n\n<li><strong>Hybrid approaches<\/strong> (Cilium + AWS CNI) marginally reduced latency, but not enough to outperform native AWS CNI.<\/li>\n\n<li>Adding <strong>kube-proxy to the mix (Cluster 4)<\/strong> slightly helped with p99 tail latency in some tests.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Features vs Performance: The Trade-off of Cilium CNI<\/h2>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-regular\">\n<table class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color has-fixed-layout\" style=\"background-color: #f8f2f8;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><strong>Feature<\/strong><\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><strong>Cilium CNI<\/strong><\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\"><strong>AWS VPC CNI<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">K8s Network Policy Support<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Service-based Policy<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">No<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Entity-based Policy<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">No<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Protocol-agnostic<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">No<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Service Account-based Policy<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Yes<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">No<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Compatibility with Istio<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Partial<\/td>\n<td class=\"has-text-align-center\" data-align=\"center\">Full<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n\n<p>Although Cilium is rich in security and observability features via CRDs, it shows incompatibilities with Istio in specific Layer 7 policy scenarios (e.g., split-brain architecture and mTLS conflicts).<\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Our Recommendation on Cilium vs AWS CNI<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n<p>If raw performance and compatibility are your highest priorities\u2014especially when using Istio and mTLS\u2014stick with AWS VPC CNI. It offers predictable low-latency communication with full support for Istio service mesh.<\/p>\n\n<p>That being said, Cilium is a powerful tool for enhancing network visibility and enforcing policies. You can start by layering Cilium in policy-only mode or as a secondary CNI for selected namespaces, thereby benefiting from its strengths without introducing significant latency overhead.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n<p>Latency is just one part of the puzzle. Security, observability, and policy flexibility are also important considerations. The decision to adopt Cilium over AWS CNI (or vice versa) should align with your architecture goals.<\/p>\n\n<p>At IMESH, we help teams build the right mix of performance and security for their Kubernetes networking. Want to test your CNI stack or optimize Istio?<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Kubernetes continues to dominate enterprise infrastructure, networking performance becomes a critical<span class=\"excerpt-more\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cilium","category-kubernetes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cilium CNI vs AWS CNI: Latency Comparison in K8s Networking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Explore a fresh perspective on Kubernetes networking as we compare Cilium CNI and AWS CNI. Understand key differences in latency, performance, and scalability for your container workloads.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/imesh.ai\/blog\/cilium-vs-aws-cni-latency-kubernetes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cilium CNI vs AWS CNI: Latency Comparison in K8s Networking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Explore a fresh perspective on Kubernetes networking as we compare Cilium CNI and AWS CNI. 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