Cilium vs Ryu SDN Framework
Cilium
cilium.ioRyu SDN Framework
ryu-sdn.orgSide by side
| Figure | Cilium | Ryu SDN Framework |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Software-Defined Networking Software | 8.0 (#3) | 6.6 (#20) |
| Community support | Cilium documentation directs users to its FAQ, Slack channels, and GitHub issue tracker for help and bug reports. | The project lists the Ryu devel mailing list for questions, suggestions and patches. |
| Integrations | Cilium documentation describes integrations with Prometheus and Grafana for metrics and dashboards. | The documentation includes a Snort integration guide. |
| Purpose | Cilium is an open source, cloud native solution for providing, securing, and observing network connectivity between workloads, powered by eBPF. | Ryu is a component-based software-defined networking framework for building network management and control applications. |
Plans
In their own words
Cilium
Cilium is an open-source, cloud-native system for providing, securing, and observing network connectivity between workloads using eBPF. Its networking capabilities include CNI, Layer 4 load balancing, Cluster Mesh, kube-proxy replacement, BGP, service mesh, Gateway API, IPv6, host firewall, and ingress. Network policies can enforce identity-aware rules from L3 through L7, including DNS- and HTTP-aware filtering. Security features include runtime protection and transparent encryption of managed host and endpoint traffic using IPsec, WireGuard, or ztunnel; ztunnel support is marked beta. For visibility, Cilium lists service maps, metrics and tracing export, network flow logs, and protocol visibility. Hubble, built on Cilium and eBPF, provides visibility into service communication and behavior. Documentation describes Prometheus and Grafana integrations and Kubernetes support for services including GKE, AKS, EKS, OpenShift, RKE, k3s, and Alibaba ACK. Its container image requires AMD64 or AArch64 hosts running Linux kernel 5.10 or later, or an equivalent kernel such as 4.18 on RHEL 8.10. For environments above 500 nodes, the quick installation guide directs readers to large-environment guidance or specific datapath modes.
Ryu SDN Framework
Ryu SDN Framework has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.