Istio
In plain terms
A popular service mesh for Kubernetes.
Going deeper
Istio manages traffic, security, and observability between microservices using Envoy sidecar proxies, without app code changes. It adds advanced networking control.
Under the hood
Provides mTLS, traffic shaping, and telemetry via its control plane and data plane; powerful but complex.
Examples
Service mesh, mTLS, traffic routing, canary, microservice observability.
Think of it like...
Like a city's full traffic-management system layered over your services.