How to: Introduction
[Istio](https://istio.io/latest/docs/concepts/what-is-istio/) is an open platform for providing a uniform way to [integrate
microservices](https://istio.io/latest/docs/examples/microservices-istio/), manage [traffic flow](https://istio.io/latest/docs/concepts/traffic-management/) across microservices, enforce policies
and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction
layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes.

Istio is composed of these components:

- **Envoy** - Sidecar proxies per microservice to handle ingress/egress traffic
   between services in the cluster and from a service to external
   services. The proxies form a _secure microservice mesh_ providing a rich
   set of functions like discovery, rich layer-7 routing, circuit breakers,
   policy enforcement and telemetry recording/reporting
   functions.

  > Note: The service mesh is not an overlay network. It
  > simplifies and enhances how microservices in an application talk to each
  > other over the network provided by the underlying platform.

* **Ztunnel** - A lightweight data plane proxy written in Rust,
    used in Ambient mesh mode to provide secure connectivity and observability for workloads without sidecar proxies.

- **Istiod** - The Istio control plane. It provides service discovery, configuration and certificate management.