README.md
1# xDS API Working Group (xDS-WG)
2
3# Goal
4
5The objective of the xDS API Working Group (xDS-WG) is to bring together parties
6across the industry interested in a common control and configuration API for
7data plane proxies and load balancers, based on the xDS APIs.
8
9# Vision
10
11The xDS vision is one of a universal data plane API, articulated at
12[https://blog.envoyproxy.io/the-universal-data-plane-api-d15cec7a](https://blog.envoyproxy.io/the-universal-data-plane-api-d15cec7a).
13xDS aims to provide a set of APIs that provide the de facto standard for L4/L7
14data plane configuration, similar to the role played by OpenFlow at L2/L3/L4 in
15SDN.
16
17The [existing Envoy xDS
18APIs](https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/tree/master/api) constitute the basis
19for this vision and will incrementally evolve towards supporting a goal of
20client neutrality. We will evolve the xDS APIs to support additional clients,
21for example data plane proxies beyond Envoy, proxyless service mesh libraries,
22hardware load balancers, mobile clients and beyond. We will strive to be vendor
23and implementation agnostic to the degree possible while not regressing on
24support for data plane components that have committed to xDS in production
25(Envoy & gRPC to date).
26
27The xDS APIs have two delineated aspects, a transport protocol and data model,
28The xDS transport protocol provides a low latency versioned streaming gRPC
29delivery of xDS resources. The data model covers common data plane concerns such
30as service discovery, load balancing assignments, routing discovery, listener
31configuration, secret discovery, load reporting, health check delegation, etc.
32
33# Repository structure
34
35The xDS APIs are split between this repository and
36https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/tree/master/api. Our long-term goal is to
37move the entire API to this repository, this will be done opportunistically over
38time as we generalize parts of the API to be less client-specific.
39
40# Mailing list and meetings
41
42We have an open mailing list [xds-wg@lists.cncf.io](https://lists.cncf.io/g/xds-wg/) for communication and announcements. We also meet
43on an ad hoc basis via Zoom.
44
45To monitor activity, you can either subscribe to a GitHub watch on this repository or join the [@cncf/xds-wg](https://github.com/orgs/cncf/teams/xds-wg) team for
46tagging on key PRs and RFCs.
47