CNI Plugins vs Spiderpool

CNI Plugins is a collection of reference and example network plugins for configuring connectivity in Linux and Windows containers. CNI supplies a specification and libraries, plus a command-line tool for executing plugins and a Go library for application integration. Interface options include bridge, ipvlan, loopback, macvlan, point-to-point, VLAN, host-device, and dummy; Windows-specific plugins include win-bridge and win-overlay. IP address management choices cover DHCP, host-local allocation tracking, and static IPv4 or IPv6 allocation. Meta plugins handle interface tuning, port mapping, bandwidth limits, source-based routing, and firewall rules, and a sample plugin illustrates custom plugin development. CNI focuses on connecting containers and removing allocated resources when a container is deleted. The project is distributed under Apache License 2.0 and is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project. It is free, with a plan listed at free. Linux and Windows are supported; the latest release page lists Linux archives for amd64, arm, and arm64.

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.