API Gateway: Layer 8 network

Recognizing that the API gateway is very important in the eighth layer of networking, the reason is to discuss its role as a strategic control point in the network architecture.

API is a set of rules for managing data exchange between devices. "Most of the network runs based on HTTP. Smart devices, networked devices, and automation systems all rely on HTTP to monitor and operate their applications and services to exchange API calls and data."

It establishes the definition of APIs and proves that APIs are on top of the existing network stack, which makes them the eighth layer.

Now consider the definition of an API gateway:

 

"The API gateway receives all API calls from the client, and then routes them to the appropriate microservices through request routing, composition, and protocol conversion. Normally, it processes a request by calling multiple microservices, and aggregates the results into Determine the best path. It can convert between network protocols and unfriendly network protocols used internally."

I can rewrite this definition and use an IPv6 gateway to illustrate this parallel relationship, but I will not emphasize this point. Recognizing that the API gateway is very important in the eighth layer of networking, the reason is to discuss its role as a strategic control point in the network architecture.

 

Just as ADC has become a strategic control point for routing requests, converting protocols (HTTPS to HTTP), and finding the best path (load balancing/global server load balancing), API gateways are rapidly becoming a strategy in the "application" network Control point. The reason I use the shocking tone is because it is not a true independent network, but an independent plane in the existing network stack. It is incremental, not a substitute.

Whenever an architectural structure becomes the "thing" that all traffic passes through, it becomes a strategic control point that can make decisions. These decisions may be related to security, such as redirecting requests for operational API commands through a certain security mechanism to ensure the legitimacy and authority of such commands by the requester. These decisions may be related to performance, such as their ability to determine the "best path" based on business results related to digital experience expectations. This may be due to availability despite performance degradation, or it may be based solely on performance. With its architectural position in the network, the API gateway is often the best judge of how to meet these expectations.

 

API gateways are undoubtedly becoming a "trend". According to our research, nearly half (48%) of organizations are already using them, and a quarter (25%) of organizations plan to use them by the end of 2021.

This is a good thing, because API usage continues to explode in minutes. A survey conducted at the end of 2020 found that "through 2021, the use of APIs will have greater growth. The survey found that 71.1% of developers expect to use more APIs in 2021."

 

The combination of digital transformation and the adoption of modern, microservice-based architectures must be behind this growth. For example, a survey by Propeller Insights in 2020 found that the optimal number of APIs per application is between 26 and 50.

Therefore, this growth is really or may be explosive. Because as usual, this has not yet taken into account the proliferation of cloud and other operational APIs that are exposed to manage and operate everything from the Internet of Things to network devices to management consoles.

 

The growth of API is inevitable. This growth effectively adds more traffic to the network—requests and responses—on a layer above the traditional network stack. This makes the emergence of a network structure inevitably to provide routing, security, and management of requests and responses across the network.

 

This structure is the API gateway, which will become a strategic control point for enterprises to manage, guarantee and optimize the experience of operators and consumers (albeit without their knowledge) using them.