Goal:
Provide a Technical Preview of Gateway API with Istio to unify the management of cluster ingress with a common, open, expressive, and extensible API.

Description:
Gateway API is the evolution of upstream Kubernetes Ingress APIs. The upstream project is part of Kubernetes, working under SIG-NETWORK. OpenShift is contributing to the development, building a leadership position, and preparing OpenShift to support Gateway API, with Istio as our supported implementation.

The plug-able nature of the implementation of Gateway API enables support for additional and optional 3rd-party Ingress technologies.

At its core, OpenShift's implementation of Gateway API will be based on the existing Cluster Ingress Operator and OpenShift Service Mesh (OSSM). The Ingress Operator will manage the Gateway API CRDs (gatewayclasses, gateways, httproutes), install and configure OSSM, and configure DNS records for gateways. OSSM will manage the Istio and Envoy deployments for gateways and configure them based on the associated httproutes. Although OSSM in its normal configuration does support service mesh, the Ingress Operator will configure OSSM without service mesh features enabled; for example, using Gateway API will not require the use of sidecar proxies. Istio will be configured specifically to support Gateway API for cluster ingress. See the gateway-api-with-cluster-ingress-operator enhancement proposal for more details.