Skip to content
Kong Docs are moving soon! Our docs are migrating to a new home. You'll be automatically redirected to the new site in the future. In the meantime, view this page on the new site!
Kong Logo | Kong Docs Logo
  • Docs
    • Explore the API Specs
      View all API Specs View all API Specs View all API Specs arrow image
    • Documentation
      API Specs
      Kong Gateway
      Lightweight, fast, and flexible cloud-native API gateway
      Kong Konnect
      Single platform for SaaS end-to-end connectivity
      Kong AI Gateway
      Multi-LLM AI Gateway for GenAI infrastructure
      Kong Mesh
      Enterprise service mesh based on Kuma and Envoy
      decK
      Helps manage Kong’s configuration in a declarative fashion
      Kong Ingress Controller
      Works inside a Kubernetes cluster and configures Kong to proxy traffic
      Kong Gateway Operator
      Manage your Kong deployments on Kubernetes using YAML Manifests
      Insomnia
      Collaborative API development platform
  • Plugin Hub
    • Explore the Plugin Hub
      View all plugins View all plugins View all plugins arrow image
    • Functionality View all View all arrow image
      View all plugins
      AI's icon
      AI
      Govern, secure, and control AI traffic with multi-LLM AI Gateway plugins
      Authentication's icon
      Authentication
      Protect your services with an authentication layer
      Security's icon
      Security
      Protect your services with additional security layer
      Traffic Control's icon
      Traffic Control
      Manage, throttle and restrict inbound and outbound API traffic
      Serverless's icon
      Serverless
      Invoke serverless functions in combination with other plugins
      Analytics & Monitoring's icon
      Analytics & Monitoring
      Visualize, inspect and monitor APIs and microservices traffic
      Transformations's icon
      Transformations
      Transform request and responses on the fly on Kong
      Logging's icon
      Logging
      Log request and response data using the best transport for your infrastructure
  • Support
  • Community
  • Kong Academy
Get a Demo Start Free Trial
Kong Mesh
2.2.x
  • Home icon
  • Kong Mesh
  • Production
  • Cp Deployment
  • Zone Ingress
github-edit-pageEdit this page
report-issueReport an issue
  • Kong Gateway
  • Kong Konnect
  • Kong Mesh
  • Kong AI Gateway
  • Plugin Hub
  • decK
  • Kong Ingress Controller
  • Kong Gateway Operator
  • Insomnia
  • Kuma

  • Docs contribution guidelines
  • dev
  • 2.10.x (latest)
  • 2.9.x
  • 2.8.x
  • 2.7.x (LTS)
  • 2.6.x
  • 2.5.x
  • 2.4.x
  • 2.3.x
  • 2.2.x
  • Introduction
    • About service meshes
    • Overview of Kong Mesh
    • How Kong Mesh works
    • Architecture
    • Stages of software availability
    • Version support policy
    • Mesh requirements
    • Release notes
  • Getting Started
  • Kong Mesh in Production
    • Overview
    • Deployment topologies
      • Overview
      • Standalone deployment
      • Multi-zone deployment
    • Install kumactl
    • Use Kong Mesh
    • Control plane deployment
      • Kong Mesh license
      • Deploy a standalone control plane
      • Deploy a multi-zone global control plane
      • Zone Ingress
      • Zone Egress
      • Configure zone proxy authentication
      • Control plane configuration reference
      • Systemd
    • Create multiple service meshes in a cluster
    • Data plane configuration
      • Data plane proxy
      • Configure the data plane on Kubernetes
      • Configure the data plane on Universal
      • Configure the Kong Mesh CNI
      • Configure transparent proxying
      • IPv6 support
    • Secure your deployment
      • Manage secrets
      • Authentication with the API server
      • Authentication with the data plane proxy
      • Configure data plane proxy membership
      • Secure access across services
      • Kong Mesh RBAC
      • FIPS support
    • Kong Mesh user interface
    • Upgrades and tuning
      • Upgrade Kong Mesh
      • Performance fine-tuning
  • Deploy
    • Explore Kong Mesh with the Kubernetes demo app
    • Explore Kong Mesh with the Universal demo app
  • Explore
    • Gateway
      • Delegated
      • Builtin
    • CLI
      • kumactl
    • Observability
      • Demo setup
      • Control plane metrics
      • Configuring Prometheus
      • Configuring Grafana
      • Configuring Datadog
      • Observability in multi-zone
    • Inspect API
      • Matched policies
      • Affected data plane proxies
      • Envoy proxy configuration
    • Kubernetes Gateway API
      • Installation
      • Usage
      • TLS termination
      • Customization
      • Multi-mesh
      • Multi-zone
      • How it works
  • Networking
    • Service Discovery
    • DNS
      • How it works
      • Installation
      • Configuration
      • Usage
    • Non-mesh traffic
      • Incoming
      • Outgoing
    • Transparent Proxying
  • Monitor & manage
    • Dataplane Health
      • Circuit Breaker Policy
      • Kubernetes and Universal Service Probes
      • Health Check Policy
    • Control Plane Configuration
      • Modifying the configuration
      • Inspecting the configuration
      • Store
  • Policies
    • Introduction
    • General notes about Kong Mesh policies
    • Applying Policies
    • How Kong Mesh chooses the right policy to apply
    • Understanding TargetRef policies
    • Protocol support in Kong Mesh
    • Mutual TLS
      • Usage of "builtin" CA
      • Usage of "provided" CA
      • Permissive mTLS
      • Certificate Rotation
    • Traffic Permissions
      • Usage
      • Access to External Services
    • Traffic Route
      • Usage
    • Traffic Metrics
      • Expose metrics from data plane proxies
      • Expose metrics from applications
      • Override Prometheus settings per data plane proxy
      • Filter Envoy metrics
      • Secure data plane proxy metrics
    • Traffic Trace
      • Add a tracing backend to the mesh
      • Add TrafficTrace resource
    • Traffic Log
      • Add a logging backend
      • Add a TrafficLog resource
      • Logging external services
      • Builtin Gateway support
      • Access Log Format
    • Locality-aware Load Balancing
      • Enabling locality-aware load balancing
    • Fault Injection
      • Usage
      • Matching
    • Health Check
      • Usage
      • Matching
    • Circuit Breaker
      • Usage
      • Matching
      • Builtin Gateway support
      • Non-mesh traffic
    • External Service
      • Usage
      • Builtin Gateway support
    • Retry
      • Usage
      • Matching
      • Builtin Gateway support
    • Timeout
      • Usage
      • Configuration
      • Default general-purpose Timeout policy
      • Matching
      • Builtin Gateway support
      • Inbound timeouts
      • Non-mesh traffic
    • Rate Limit
      • Usage
      • Matching destinations
      • Builtin Gateway support
    • Virtual Outbound
      • Examples
    • MeshGateway
      • TLS Termination
    • MeshGatewayRoute
      • Listener tags
      • Matching
      • Filters
      • Reference
    • MeshGatewayInstance
    • Service Health Probes
      • Kubernetes
      • Universal probes
    • MeshAccessLog (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshCircuitBreaker (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshFaultInjection (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshHealthCheck (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshHTTPRoute (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
      • Merging
    • MeshProxyPatch (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
      • Merging
    • MeshRateLimit (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshRetry (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTimeout (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTrace (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshTrafficPermission (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • MeshLoadBalancingStrategy (Beta)
      • TargetRef support matrix
      • Configuration
      • Examples
    • OPA policy
    • MeshOPA (beta)
    • MeshGlobalRateLimit (beta)
  • Enterprise Features
    • Overview
    • HashiCorp Vault CA
    • Amazon ACM Private CA
    • cert-manager Private CA
    • OPA policy support
    • MeshOPA (beta)
    • Multi-zone authentication
    • FIPS support
    • Certificate Authority rotation
    • Role-Based Access Control
    • UBI Images
    • Windows Support
    • ECS Support
    • Auditing
    • MeshGlobalRateLimit (beta)
  • Reference
    • HTTP API
    • Kubernetes annotations and labels
    • Kuma data collection
    • Control plane configuration reference
    • Envoy proxy template
  • Community
    • Contribute to Kuma
enterprise-switcher-icon Switch to OSS
You are browsing documentation for an older version. See the latest documentation here.

Zone Ingress

To implement cross-zone communication when Kong Mesh is deployed in a multi-zone mode, there is a new proxy type ZoneIngress. These proxies are not attached to any particular workload. Instead, they are bound to that particular zone. Zone Ingress can proxy the traffic between all meshes, so we need only one deployment in each zone.
All requests that are sent from one zone to another will be directed to the proper instance by the Zone Ingress.

Because ZoneIngress uses Server Name Indication (SNI) to route traffic, mTLS is required to do cross zone communication.

The ZoneIngress entity includes a few sections:

  • type: must be ZoneIngress.
  • name: this is the name of the Zone Ingress instance, and it must be unique for any given zone.
  • networking: contains networking parameters of the Zone Ingress
    • address: the address of the network interface Zone Ingress is listening on. Could be the address of either public or private network interface, but the latter must be used with a load balancer.
    • port: is a port that Zone Ingress is listening on default to 10001
    • advertisedAddress: an IP address or hostname which will be used to communicate with the Zone Ingress. Zone Ingress doesn’t listen on this address. If Zone Ingress is exposed using a load balancer, then the address of the load balancer should be used here. If Zone Ingress is listening on the public network interface, then the address of the public network interface should be used here.
    • advertisedPort: a port which will be used to communicate with the Zone Ingress. Zone Ingress doesn’t listen on this port.
    • admin: determines parameters related to Envoy Admin API
      • port: the port that Envoy Admin API will listen to
  • availableServices [auto-generated on Kong Mesh CP] : the list of services that could be consumed through the Zone Ingress
  • zone [auto-generated on Kong Mesh CP] : zone where Zone Ingress is running

Zone Ingress without advertisedAddress and advertisedPort is not taken into account when generating Envoy configuration, because they cannot be accessed by data plane proxies from other zones.

Kubernetes
Universal

To install ZoneIngress in Kubernetes when doing kumactl install control-plane use the --ingress-enabled. If using helm add kuma.ingress.enabled: true to your values.yaml.

Kong Mesh will set advertisedAddress and advertisedPort automatically by checking the Service associated with this Zone Ingress.

If the Service type is Load Balancer, Kong Mesh will wait for public IP to be resolved. It may take a couple of minutes to receive public IP depending on the LB implementation of your Kubernetes provider. If the Service type is Node Port, Kong Mesh will take an External IP of the first Node in the cluster and combine it with Node Port.

You can provide your own public address and port using the following annotations on the Ingress deployment:

  • kuma.io/ingress-public-address
  • kuma.io/ingress-public-port

In Universal mode, the token is required to authenticate ZoneIngress instance. Create the token by using kumactl binary:

kumactl generate zone-token --valid-for 720h --scope ingress > /path/to/token

Create a ZoneIngress configuration to allow services to receive traffic from other zones:

type: ZoneIngress
name: zoneingress-1
networking:
  address: 192.168.0.1
  port: 10001
  advertisedAddress: 10.0.0.1 # Adapt to the address of the Load Balancer in front of your ZoneIngresses
  advertisedPort: 10001 # Adapt to the port of the Load Balancer in front of you ZoneIngresses

Apply the ingress configuration, passing the IP address of the control plane and your instance should start.

kuma-dp run \
--proxy-type=ingress \
--cp-address=https://<kuma-cp-address>:5678 \
--dataplane-token-file=/path/to/token \
--dataplane-file=/path/to/config

A ZoneIngress deployment can be scaled horizontally. Many instances can have the same advertised address and advertised port because they can be put behind one load balancer.

Thank you for your feedback.
Was this page useful?
Too much on your plate? close cta icon
More features, less infrastructure with Kong Konnect. 1M requests per month for free.
Try it for Free
  • Kong
    Powering the API world

    Increase developer productivity, security, and performance at scale with the unified platform for API management, service mesh, and ingress controller.

    • Products
      • Kong Konnect
      • Kong Gateway Enterprise
      • Kong Gateway
      • Kong Mesh
      • Kong Ingress Controller
      • Kong Insomnia
      • Product Updates
      • Get Started
    • Documentation
      • Kong Konnect Docs
      • Kong Gateway Docs
      • Kong Mesh Docs
      • Kong Insomnia Docs
      • Kong Konnect Plugin Hub
    • Open Source
      • Kong Gateway
      • Kuma
      • Insomnia
      • Kong Community
    • Company
      • About Kong
      • Customers
      • Careers
      • Press
      • Events
      • Contact
  • Terms• Privacy• Trust and Compliance
© Kong Inc. 2025