Purpose: This article examines the architectural paradigm shift initiated by the service mesh in cloud-native microservices environments, focusing on its efficacy in enhancing system performance, security, and operational capability. The study provides a comparative analysis of prominent mesh implementations, specifically addressing literature gaps concerning resource overhead mitigation and operational complexity in advanced topologies.

Methodology: A conceptual and technical comparative analysis framework is employed, detailing the separation of concerns between the Data Plane (sidecar proxy) and the Control Plane (policy and configuration). The methodology conceptually evaluates the trade-offs introduced by leading meshes (e.g., Istio and Linkerd) across key functional areas: traffic management, mTLS-based Zero Trust security, and distributed observability.

Findings: The service mesh is demonstrated to be a foundational enabler of sophisticated resilience and security, particularly in implementing Zero Trust principles, which is associated with a reported reduction in successful lateral movement attacks. However, this infrastructure layer introduces significant performance overhead and operational complexity. Future architectural evolution is strongly associated with mitigation strategies, including kernel-level optimization (eBPF) and the movement toward multi-mesh federation to support large-scale, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed deployments. The increase in control plane development focusing on multi-cluster features confirms this trajectory.

Originality: This work synthesizes current technological trends and academic gaps, identifying the critical need for formal security verification and AI/ML-driven solutions to manage the cognitive load of mesh telemetry.

Service Mesh, Microservices, Cloud-Native, Zero Trust

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