Platform & DevOps·Traffic into and inside the cluster
the proxy reads the request, routes on the path, retries the failed one on another backend and adds a trace header.
Layer 7 load balancing
Also calledL7 load balancing, application-layer balancing, HTTP routing
Distributing traffic per request at the application layer, which requires terminating and parsing the protocol. It buys path and header routing, per-request balancing, retries, timeouts, rewriting and observability, and it costs CPU, latency and the need to handle certificates. Nearly everything a service mesh or an ingress does that sounds clever is this distinction and nothing more.