Frequently Asked Questions

    Linkerd works by inserting ultralight proxies (collectively, the “data plane”)alongside each application instance. Linkerd’s control plane provides operatorswith a uniform point at which they can control and measure the behavior of thedata plane. Operators typically interact with Linkerd using the and the web dashboard UI.

    Who owns Linkerd and how is it licensed?

    Linkerd is hosted by the (CNCF) project. The CNCF owns the trademark; the copyright is held by theLinkerd authors themselves.

    Linkerd is licensed under Apache2.0.

    Who is Linkerd for?

    Linkerd is for everyone. In practice, Linkerd has certain technicalprerequisites. Read on below.

    How do I pronounce Linkerd?

    The “d” is pronounced separately, i.e. “Linker-DEE”. (It’s a UNIX thing.)

    How do I write Linkerd?

    Just like this: Linkerd. Capital “L”, lower-case everything else.

    Is there an Enterprise edition, or a commercial edition?

    No. Everything in Linkerd is fully open source. Some companies provide.

    What’s the difference between Linkerd 1.x and 2.x?

    Linkerd 1.x is built on the “Twitter stack”: Finagle, Netty, Scala, and theJVM.

    Linkerd 2.x is built in Rust and Go. It is significantly faster andlighter weight than 1.x, but currently only supports Kubernetes.

    Is Linkerd 1.x still supported?

    Yes, the 1.x branch of Linkerd is under active development, and continuesto power the production infrastructure of companies around the globe.

    The full Linkerd 1.x documentation is here.

    Does Linkerd require Kubernetes?

    Linkerd 2.x currently requires Kubernetes, though this will change in thefuture. Linkerd 1.x can be installed on any platform, and supports Kubernetes,DC/OS, Mesos, Consul, and ZooKeeper-based environments.

    The public also provides a coarse-grained roadmap.

    How secure is Linkerd?

    Very secure. A third party security audit of Linkerd2.x wascompleted in June 2019, and Linkerd passed with flying colors.

    How fast is Linkerd?

    Very fast. A was performed in Mayof 2019, and showed that Linkerd significantly outperformed Istio.

    How do I use Linkerd to route traffic between services?

    (2.x) Linkerd doesn’t change the way routing works. You address other services justas you would without Linkerd, e.g. ,or service-name if within the same namespace.

    How does Linkerd handle ingress?

    (2.x) For reasons of simplicity, Linkerd doesn’t provide ingress itself, butinstead works in conjunction with the ingresscontroller of your choice.

    Linkerd’s proxies do not integrate with Kubernetes directly, but rely on thecontrol plane for service discovery information. The proxies are designed tocontinue operating even if they can’t reach the control plane.

    If new proxies are deployed when the control plane is unreachable, these newproxies will not be able to operate. They will timeout all new requests untilsuch time as they can reach the control plane.