What is dxgate¶
dxgate is the delegated gateway for Dubbo Gateway API traffic and the external data-plane proxy of the Apache Dubbo Kubernetes project. As an xDS client it consumes the complete HTTP, LLM, MCP, and A2A runtime configuration from dubbod.
Ordinary applications and AI workloads share that one Gateway API and xDS path. Core Kubernetes Service represents ordinary backends; the mesh-native DxgateService represents OpenAI, Anthropic, MCP, and A2A backends.
The problem it solves¶
Bringing AI workloads into a mesh usually produces two edges: one for application services, one for models and agents. Two edges mean two sets of certificates, two rate-limit configurations, and two definitions of what a metric means. dxgate collapses them into one data plane:
- applications and AI agents enter through the same gateway process;
dubbodcompiles core Services andDxgateServiceobjects into one RDS configuration delivered over xDS;- authentication, rate limiting, retries, timeouts, and header rewrites are declared once and apply to both.
Traffic it carries¶
| Traffic | Matched on | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| HTTP | host, path, header | Weighted clusters; prefix and exact path matching |
| gRPC / Dubbo Triple | content-type |
End-to-end HTTP/2 with streaming bodies and trailer propagation |
| LLM | /v1/* paths and the request body's model |
OpenAI-compatible wire format; SSE responses stream through untouched |
| MCP | mcp-session-id and tool name |
Sessions stick to a backend; tools/list is federated across backends |
| A2A | Agent Card and A2A endpoints | Forwarded by agent name |
Relationship to the mesh¶
dxgate sits at the cluster edge and handles only the hop in and out; service-to-service calls inside the cluster stay with the mesh. The edge and the mesh share one declarative model but keep separate failure domains — reloading gateway configuration does not disturb established in-mesh connections.
Next, read Gateway architecture and the unified DxgateService API. Backend guides: ordinary Kubernetes Services, LLM routing, MCP routing, and A2A forwarding. Subscription and API billing: cost control.