The industry is embracing Generative AI functionality, and we need to evolve how we handle traffic on an industry-wide scale. Keeping AI traffic handling features exclusive to enterprise licenses is counterproductive to the industry’s needs. This approach limits incentives to a single commercial entity and its customers. Even single-company open-source initiatives do not promote open multi-company collaboration.
A shared challenge like this presents an opportunity for open collaboration to build the necessary features. We believe bringing together different use cases and requirements through open collaboration will lead to better solutions and accelerate innovation. The industry will benefit from diverse expertise and experiences by openly collaborating on software across companies and industries.
That is why Tetrate and Bloomberg have started an open collaboration to bring critical features for this new era of Gen AI integration. Collaborating openly in the Envoy community, bringing AI traffic handling features to Envoy, via Envoy Gateway and Envoy Proxy.
Why we need AI traffic handling features
What makes traffic to LLM models different from traditional API traffic?
On the surface it appears similar. Traffic comes from a client app that is making an API request, and this request has to get to the provider that hosts the LLM model.
However, it is different. Managing LLM traffic from multiple apps, to multiple LLM providers, introduces new and different challenges where traditional API Gateway features fall short.
For example, traditional rate-limiting based on number of requests doesn’t work for controlling usage of LLM providers as they’re computationally complex services. To measure usage LLM providers tokenize the words in the request message and response message, and count the number of tokens used. This count gives a good approximation of the computational complexity and cost of serving the request.
Beyond controlling usage of LLMs there are many more challenges relating to ease of integration and high-availability architectures. It’s no longer enough to just optimize for quality of service alone, adopters must consider costs of usage in real time. As adopters of Gen AI look for Gateway solutions to handle these challenges for their system, they often find the necessary features locked behind enterprise licenses.
Three key MVP features
Now, let’s look at how handling AI traffic poses new challenges for Gateways. There are several features we discussed together with our collaborators at Bloomberg, and together we decided on three key features for the MVP:
- Usage Limiting – to control LLM usage based on word tokens
- Unified API – to simplify client integration with multiple LLM providers
- Upstream Authorization – to configure Authorization to multiple upstream LLM providers
What other features are you looking for? Get in touch with us to share your use case and define the future of Envoy AI Gateway.
We are really excited about these features being part of Envoy. They will benefit those integrating with LLM providers and, ultimately, also Gateway users for general API request traffic.
When it comes to AI Gateway features, we have chosen to collaborate and build within the CNCF Envoy project because we believe multi-company, open-source projects benefit the entire industry by enabling innovation without creating single vendor risk.
Tetrate offers an enterprise-ready, 100% upstream distribution of Envoy Gateway, Tetrate Enterprise Gateway for Envoy. Schedule a time to talk to an expert to learn if Envoy Gateway can help accelerate your cloud architecture strategy.
Talk to an expert ›
How do I learn more?
Via our Newsletter: Sign up to our mailing list to stay updated.
Attend Online CNCF Panel Event: To learn more about integrating AI in the enterprise, attend the live CNCF-hosted event “Enabling AI adoption at scale – The AI Platform with Envoy AI Gateway” on October 17th with panelists from Tetrate and Bloomberg. You will be able to ask questions and interact with the panel live.
See a demo at Tetrate booth at KubeCon NA: Visit Tetrate at booth #Q2 at KubeCon NA for a demo to see a demo and talk to engineers working on the AI traffic handling features.
###
If you’re new to service mesh, Tetrate has a bunch of free online courses available at Tetrate Academy that will quickly get you up to speed with Istio and Envoy.
Are you using Kubernetes? Tetrate Enterprise Gateway for Envoy (TEG) is the easiest way to get started with Envoy Gateway for production use cases. Get the power of Envoy Proxy in an easy-to-consume package managed by the Kubernetes Gateway API. Learn more ›
Getting started with Istio? If you’re looking for the surest way to get to production with Istio, check out Tetrate Istio Subscription. Tetrate Istio Subscription has everything you need to run Istio and Envoy in highly regulated and mission-critical production environments. It includes Tetrate Istio Distro, a 100% upstream distribution of Istio and Envoy that is FIPS-verified and FedRAMP ready. For teams requiring open source Istio and Envoy without proprietary vendor dependencies, Tetrate offers the ONLY 100% upstream Istio enterprise support offering.
Get a Demo