eBPF Maps

All BPF maps are created with upper capacity limits. Insertion beyond the limit will fail and thus limits the scalability of the datapath. The following table shows the default values of the maps. Each limit can be bumped in the source code. Configuration options will be added on request if demand arises.

Map Name	Scope	Default Limit	Scale Implications
Auth	node	512k	Max 512k authenticated relations per node
Connection Tracking	node or endpoint	1M TCP/256k UDP	Max 1M concurrent TCP connections, max 256k expected UDP answers
NAT	node	512k	Max 512k NAT entries
Neighbor Table	node	512k	Max 512k neighbor entries
Endpoints	node	64k	Max 64k local endpoints + host IPs per node
IP cache	node	512k	Max 256k endpoints (IPv4+IPv6), max 512k endpoints (IPv4 or IPv6) across all clusters
Service Load Balancer	node	64k	Max ~3k clusterIP/nodePort Services across all clusters (see: service map sizing section for details).
Service Backends	node	64k	Max 64k cumulative unique backends across all services across all clusters
Policy	endpoint	16k	Max 16k allowed identity + port + protocol pairs for specific endpoint
Proxy Map	node	512k	Max 512k concurrent redirected TCP connections to proxy
Tunnel	node	64k	Max 32k nodes (IPv4+IPv6) or 64k nodes (IPv4 or IPv6) across all clusters
IPv4 Fragmentation	node	8k	Max 8k fragmented datagrams in flight simultaneously on the node
Session Affinity	node	64k	Max 64k affinities from different clients
IPv4 Masq	node	16k	Max 16k IPv4 cidrs used by BPF-based ip-masq-agent
IPv6 Masq	node	16k	Max 16k IPv6 cidrs used by BPF-based ip-masq-agent
Service Source Ranges	node	64k	Max 64k cumulative LB source ranges across all services
Egress Policy	endpoint	16k	Max 16k endpoints across all destination CIDRs across all clusters
Node	node	16k	Max 16k distinct node IPs (IPv4 & IPv6) across all clusters.

For some BPF maps, the upper capacity limit can be overridden using command line options for cilium-agent. A given capacity can be set using --bpf-auth-map-max, --bpf-ct-global-tcp-max, --bpf-ct-global-any-max, --bpf-nat-global-max, --bpf-neigh-global-max, --bpf-policy-map-max, --bpf-fragments-map-max and --bpf-lb-map-max.

Note

In case the --bpf-ct-global-tcp-max and/or --bpf-ct-global-any-max are specified, the NAT table size (--bpf-nat-global-max) must not exceed 2/3 of the combined CT table size (TCP + UDP). This will automatically be set if either --bpf-nat-global-max is not explicitly set or if dynamic BPF map sizing is used (see below).

Using the --bpf-map-dynamic-size-ratio flag, the upper capacity limits of several large BPF maps are determined at agent startup based on the given ratio of the total system memory. For example, a given ratio of 0.0025 leads to 0.25% of the total system memory to be used for these maps.

This flag affects the following BPF maps that consume most memory in the system: cilium_ct_{4,6}_global, cilium_ct_{4,6}_any, cilium_nodeport_neigh{4,6}, cilium_snat_v{4,6}_external and cilium_lb{4,6}_reverse_sk.

kube-proxy sets as the maximum number entries in the linux’s connection tracking table based on the number of cores the machine has. kube-proxy has a default of 32768 maximum entries per core with a minimum of 131072 entries regardless of the number of cores the machine has.

Cilium has its own connection tracking tables as BPF Maps and the number of entries of such maps is calculated based on the amount of total memory in the node with a minimum of 131072 entries regardless the amount of memory the machine has.

The following table presents the value that kube-proxy and Cilium sets for their own connection tracking tables when Cilium is configured with --bpf-map-dynamic-size-ratio: 0.0025.

vCPU	Memory (GiB)	Kube-proxy CT entries	Cilium CT entries
1	3.75	131072	131072
2	7.5	131072	131072
4	15	131072	131072
8	30	262144	284560
16	60	524288	569120
32	120	1048576	1138240
64	240	2097152	2276480
96	360	3145728	4552960

Service LB Map Sizing

Cilium uses the LB services maps named cilium_lb{4,6}_services_v2 to hold Service load balancer entries for clusterIP and nodePort service types. These maps are configured via the --bpf-lb-map-max flag and are set to 64k by default. If this map is full, Cilium may be unable to reconcile Service updates which may affect connectivity to service IPs or the ability to create new services.

The required size of service LB maps depends on multiple factors. Each clusterIP/nodePort service will create a number of entries equal to the number of Pods backends selected by the service, times the number of port/protocol entries in the respective Service spec.

\(\text{LB map entries per Service} = (\text{number of endpoints per service}) * (\text{number of port/protocols per service})\)

Using this, we can roughly the required map size as:

\(\text{LB map entries} \approx (\text{number of LB services}) * (\text{avg number of endpoints per service}) * (\text{avg number of port/protocols per service})\)

Note

This heuristic assumes that number of selected Pods and ports/protocol entries per service are roughly normally distributed. If your use case has large outliers (ex. such as a service that selects a very large set of Pod backends) it may be necessary to do a more detailed estimate.

Once Cilium has created the service LB maps for a Node (i.e. upon first running Cilium agent on a Node), attempting to resize the map size parameter and restarting Cilium results in connection disruptions as the new map is repopulated with existing service entries. Therefore it is important to carefully consider map requirements prior to installing Cilium if such disruptions are a concern.