Antrea vs Spiderpool

Antrea provides networking and security for Kubernetes workloads by implementing the Container Network Interface and Kubernetes NetworkPolicy. It uses Open vSwitch as its data plane, including for Kubernetes Service load balancing. Depending on infrastructure and use case, clusters can use VXLAN or Geneve overlays or run without an overlay. Antrea extends Kubernetes policy controls with tiers, rule priorities, cluster-level policies, and Node policies. It can federate clusters with a unified data plane, multi-cluster Services, and security posture. Diagnostics include command-line and UI tools for packet tracing, policy analysis, and flow inspection; metrics can be exported to Prometheus. Pod traffic encryption with IPsec or WireGuard is supported between Linux nodes, but not on Windows nodes. Deployment guides cover Amazon EKS, Azure AKS, and Google GKE, with GKE marked Alpha. The project requires a Kubernetes cluster and the Open vSwitch kernel module on every node, and its overview says it has been tested with Kubernetes 1.23 or later. Antrea is an open-source CNCF sandbox project under Apache License 2.0.

Spiderpool is a free, open-source Kubernetes networking solution for underlay networking and RDMA on bare metal, virtual machines, and public clouds. Its CRD-based IPAM handles dual-stack networks, shared or exclusive address pools, and static addresses for stateful applications. The project supports Macvlan, IPvlan, and SR-IOV, while its IPAM can pair with compatible CNIs such as Calico and Weave. Pods may use multiple underlay interfaces or combine underlay and overlay interfaces, with policy routing across them. Documented connectivity includes Pod-to-host access, conflict detection, gateway checks, and service access through kube-proxy or an eBPF replacement. RDMA works with RoCE and InfiniBand in shared or exclusive device modes. Use cases include storage, middleware, observability, AI training, latency-sensitive workloads, and separate bandwidth needs. It supports AMD64 and ARM64 nodes, with SpiderSubnet requiring Kubernetes 1.21 or later. Spiderpool is Apache 2.0 licensed and a CNCF sandbox project.