eBPF, Cilium, and the Future of Kubernetes Networking with Isovalent & VKS

About this episode

The episode discusses eBPF, Cilium, and Kubernetes networking with insights from Duffie Cooley of Isovalent.

At KubeCon 2026 in Amsterdam, Jad El-Zein and John Nicholson sit down with Duffie Cooley, Field CTO at Isovalent, to talk about eBPF, Cilium, Kubernetes networking, and the growing partnership between Isovalent and VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS). The conversation dives into how Cilium integrates with VKS as a day-zero add-on, how eBPF changes networking and observability inside Kubernetes, and why technologies like BGP, ECMP, and kube-proxy replacement matter for scalable modern platforms. Duffie also explains how Isovalent and VMware networking strategies complement each other, how enterprise capabilities extend beyond open source Cilium, and why add-on ecosystems are becoming critical for platform engineering teams operating Kubernetes at scale. If you’re building modern Kubernetes platforms, exploring VKS, or trying to simplify networking and security operations, this episode is packed with practical insights from one of the pioneers behind the technology. Guest: Duffie Cooley, Field CTO – Isovalent Hosts: Jad El-Zein & John Nicholson Event: KubeCon 2026 – Amsterdam

People in this episode

Hosts: Jad El-Zein, John Nicholson

Guest: Duffie Cooley

Topics covered

• eBPF
• Cilium
• Kubernetes networking
• Isovalent
• VMware
• platform engineering
• observability

Keywords

• eBPF
• Cilium
• Kubernetes
• networking
• observability
• BGP
• ECMP
• kube-proxy
• platform engineering

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Isovalent, VMware, vSphere Kubernetes Service

Places: Amsterdam

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