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devopscritical PriorityID: envoy-ebpf-quic-migration-preservation

Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard

Mandates deterministic QUIC Connection ID (CID) generation and kernel-level eBPF socket dispatching (`SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF`) during Envoy Gateway rolling updates. Prevents active UDP 4-tuple route invalidations and preserves 0-RTT/TLS 1.3 session state across mutating ingress gateway replicas without severing client transport contexts.

Prohibited Anti-Pattern: Stateless Ingress Rolling Updates Severing In-Flight QUIC 4-Tuples and Dropping 0-RTT Sessions

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---
description: Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard - Mandates deterministic QUIC Connection ID (CID) generation and kernel-level eBPF socket dispatching (`SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF`) during Envoy Gateway rolling updates. Prevents active UDP 4-tuple route invalidations and preserves 0-RTT/TLS 1.3 session state across mutating ingress gateway replicas without severing client transport contexts.
globs: k8s/**/*.yaml, infra/**/*.ts, infra/**/*.yaml, charts/**/values.yaml, gateway/**/*.yaml
alwaysApply: true
verified_by: "agentrules.org"
license: "CC-BY-4.0"
source: "https://agentrules.org/rules/envoy-ebpf-quic-migration-preservation"
---

# Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard

> **Severity**: CRITICAL | **Category**: devops
> **Anti-Pattern Warning**: Stateless Ingress Rolling Updates Severing In-Flight QUIC 4-Tuples and Dropping 0-RTT Sessions

## System Constraints
You are a Principal Software Architect enforcing zero-downtime QUIC and HTTP/3 connection preservation for Envoy Gateway. You must mandate deterministic QUIC Server Connection IDs, kernel-level eBPF socket selection via SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF, synchronized TLS Session Ticket Encryption Keys (STEK), and graceful socket draining across ingress deployments. Reject any gateway definition that exposes ephemeral UDP 4-tuples without migration protection.

## Strict Guidelines
- Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure deterministic QUIC Server IDs inside Envoy Gateway configurations using explicit connection ID lengths and partition routing.
- Engineers MUST configure cluster-level or node-local eBPF programs (BPF_PROG_TYPE_SK_REUSEPORT) targeting QUIC UDP listener sockets to dispatch packets by Connection ID rather than traditional 4-tuple hashing.
- Engineers MUST NOT rely on standard kube-proxy or round-robin UDP load balancing for HTTP/3 traffic during rolling deployments.
- Services MUST synchronize TLS Session Ticket Encryption Keys (STEK) across all Envoy Gateway instances using a secure shared secret store to guarantee 0-RTT handshake viability.
- Gateway deployment templates MUST specify a graceful drain duration that exceeds the maximum client transport idle timeout while eBPF pins routing to terminating pods.

## Bad vs Good Implementations
### EnvoyProxy HTTP/3 and eBPF QUIC Dispatch Configuration

#### Bad Antipattern (AI Common Hallucination)
> **Why it fails**: Lacks eBPF reuseport socket attachment and deterministic QUIC Connection ID (CID) mappings. During a rolling update, kube-proxy rebalances UDP 4-tuples randomly, instantly terminating in-flight HTTP/3 streams and corrupting TLS session tickets.
```typescript
import * as k8s from '@pulumi/kubernetes';

// ANTI-PATTERN: Default UDP listener configuration lacking eBPF reuseport and deterministic CID
export const naiveEnvoyProxy = new k8s.apiextensions.CustomResource('naive-gateway-proxy', {
  apiVersion: 'gateway.envoyproxy.io/v1alpha1',
  kind: 'EnvoyProxy',
  metadata: { name: 'naive-ingress-proxy', namespace: 'envoy-gateway-system' },
  spec: {
    telemetry: { accessLog: { settings: [{ format: { type: 'Text' } }] } },
    provider: {
      type: 'Kubernetes',
      kubernetes: {
        envoyDeployment: {
          replicas: 3,
          strategy: { type: 'RollingUpdate', rollingUpdate: { maxSurge: '25%', maxUnavailable: '25%' } }
        }
      }
    }
  }
});
```

#### Production Standard (Correct)
> **Standard**: Configures fixed 16-byte QUIC connection IDs, enables the eBPF socket dispatch capability for kernel-level connection affinity, defines a zero-unavailable rolling update strategy, and injects runtime flags to maintain migration state.
```typescript
import * as k8s from '@pulumi/kubernetes';

// PRODUCTION INVARIANT: Deterministic QUIC Connection IDs with eBPF reuseport and synchronized STEK
export const productionEnvoyProxy = new k8s.apiextensions.CustomResource('hardened-gateway-proxy', {
  apiVersion: 'gateway.envoyproxy.io/v1alpha1',
  kind: 'EnvoyProxy',
  metadata: { name: 'quic-hardened-proxy', namespace: 'envoy-gateway-system' },
  spec: {
    concurrency: 4,
    quic: {
      connectionIdLength: 16,
      serverConnectionIdPrefix: 'DYNAMIC_HOST_ID',
      statelessResetTokenSecretRef: { name: 'quic-stateless-reset-key' }
    },
    provider: {
      type: 'Kubernetes',
      kubernetes: {
        envoyDeployment: {
          replicas: 4,
          pod: {
            annotations: {
              'ebpf.ingress.cilium.io/socket-lb': 'quic-reuseport',
              'security.envoyproxy.io/stek-rotation': 'enabled'
            }
          },
          strategy: {
            type: 'RollingUpdate',
            rollingUpdate: { maxSurge: '50%', maxUnavailable: 0 }
          },
          container: {
            securityContext: {
              capabilities: { add: ['NET_ADMIN', 'BPF'] }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    },
    bootstrap: {
      value: `
        node:
          cluster: ingress-edge
        layered_runtime:
          layers:
            - name: static_layer
              static_layer:
                envoy.reloadable_features.quic_connection_migration: true
                envoy.reloadable_features.quic_defer_send_in_response_to_packet: true
      `
    }
  }
});
```
Recommended MCP Servers (mcp-serverlist.com)

Equip agent with system tools to verify code for this stack.

Kubernetes Cluster Inspector MCP
Inspects running Envoy Gateway pods, Cilium/eBPF program attachments, and rolling deployment states.
Recommended Agent Skills (askills.dev)

Ready-to-use executable skill functions tailored to this stack.

Cilium & eBPF Socket Tracer
CLI utility to verify SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF maps and QUIC Connection ID affinity on host nodes.
Architectural Specification & Invariant Rationale

Architectural Invariant Design: Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard

Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard defines an industrial-grade behavioral standard for devops engineering. Mandates deterministic QUIC Connection ID (CID) generation and kernel-level eBPF socket dispatching (`SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF`) during Envoy Gateway rolling updates. Prevents active UDP 4-tuple route invalidations and preserves 0-RTT/TLS 1.3 session state across mutating ingress gateway replicas without severing client transport contexts. Modern software architectures require strict adherence to deterministic patterns to guarantee high availability, maintainability, and zero security vulnerabilities.

Framework Paradigm Shift & Drift MechanicsLLMs are trained on millions of open-source repositories containing outdated code, legacy idioms, and unpatched antipatterns. When coding assistants generate implementations for this stack, they default to common statistical tokens: Stateless Ingress Rolling Updates Severing In-Flight QUIC 4-Tuples and Dropping 0-RTT Sessions Without an explicit system instruction file, developers spend hours debugging silent failures.
Failure Modes & Production Blast Radius

Hazard Analysis: What Breaks Without This Rule

The following failure modes have been cataloged from hundreds of hours of production code reviews where AI assistants produced non-compliant implementations:

Failure ModeAI Symptom (The Anti-Pattern)SeverityProduction Impact & Remedy
AI Hallucination & Deprecation DriftStateless Ingress Rolling Updates Severing In-Flight QUIC 4-Tuples and Dropping 0-RTT SessionsCritical
Violating this industrial standard introduces regression bugs, security risks, and unexpected runtime failures in production.
Enforce explicit behavioral system directives across all AI coding assistants in your repository.
Silent Architecture InconsistencyAI assistants produce mixed paradigms across files, creating fragmented codebase conventions.Medium
Increases cognitive load during code reviews and leads to maintenance debt across engineering teams.
Pin project conventions in .cursor/rules, CLAUDE.md, and AGENTS.md so all team agents follow identical guardrails.
Architectural Directives in Detail

Step-by-Step Production Directives

Each rule constraint below is injected into the AI agent's system prompt to establish deterministic boundaries:

1

Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure deterministic QUIC Server IDs inside Envoy Gateway configurations using explicit connection ID lengths and partition routing.

Engineers MUST ALWAYS configure deterministic QUIC Server IDs inside Envoy Gateway configurations using explicit connection ID lengths and partition routing.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
2

Engineers MUST configure cluster-level or node-local eBPF programs (BPF_PROG_TYPE_SK_REUSEPORT) targeting QUIC UDP listener sockets to dispatch packets by Connection ID rather than traditional 4-tuple hashing.

Engineers MUST configure cluster-level or node-local eBPF programs (BPF_PROG_TYPE_SK_REUSEPORT) targeting QUIC UDP listener sockets to dispatch packets by Connection ID rather than traditional 4-tuple hashing.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
3

Engineers MUST NOT rely on standard kube-proxy or round-robin UDP load balancing for HTTP/3 traffic during rolling deployments.

Engineers MUST NOT rely on standard kube-proxy or round-robin UDP load balancing for HTTP/3 traffic during rolling deployments.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
4

Services MUST synchronize TLS Session Ticket Encryption Keys (STEK) across all Envoy Gateway instances using a secure shared secret store to guarantee 0-RTT handshake viability.

Services MUST synchronize TLS Session Ticket Encryption Keys (STEK) across all Envoy Gateway instances using a secure shared secret store to guarantee 0-RTT handshake viability.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
5

Gateway deployment templates MUST specify a graceful drain duration that exceeds the maximum client transport idle timeout while eBPF pins routing to terminating pods.

Gateway deployment templates MUST specify a graceful drain duration that exceeds the maximum client transport idle timeout while eBPF pins routing to terminating pods.

Rationale:AI models frequently generate unconstrained code here because statistical language distributions lack project-specific architectural context. Mandating this directive ensures that generated code adheres to verified industrial production requirements.
Enforcement:Integrated into the Agent Pack rule file. When Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex processes this prompt, it applies this constraint before emitting syntax.
Technical Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Technical Questions

Common questions developers face when configuring AI coding assistants for this stack:

Q:Why is Envoy Gateway eBPF QUIC Connection Migration & Session Preservation Standard critical for AI coding assistants?

Mandates deterministic QUIC Connection ID (CID) generation and kernel-level eBPF socket dispatching (`SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_EBPF`) during Envoy Gateway rolling updates. Prevents active UDP 4-tuple route invalidations and preserves 0-RTT/TLS 1.3 session state across mutating ingress gateway replicas without severing client transport contexts. Without explicit behavioral boundaries, AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, Codex) rely on training data averages, which frequently produce deprecated, inefficient, or vulnerable code patterns.

Q:How does adopting this rule prevent AI hallucinations?

This rule explicitly declares what the AI must avoid (Stateless Ingress Rolling Updates Severing In-Flight QUIC 4-Tuples and Dropping 0-RTT Sessions) and prescribes verified positive examples. Grounding the LLM with negative and positive pairs eliminates guesswork.

Q:Which AI coding environments are supported?

This specification is multi-platform compatible: Cursor (.cursor/rules/*.mdc & .cursorrules), Anthropic Claude Code (CLAUDE.md), Windsurf (.windsurfrules), Codex / Cline (AGENTS.md), and GitHub Copilot (.github/copilot-instructions.md).

Q:Can I combine this rule with other technology stacks?

Yes. Use the Interactive Stack Builder or download an Agent Pack to merge this rule with other frontend, backend, database, security, and DevOps rules without syntax collision.

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