# Ingress Controller An ingress controller functions as a reverse proxy and load balancer, implementing a Kubernetes Ingress. It adds an abstraction layer for traffic routing by receiving traffic from outside the Kubernetes platform and load balancing it to Pods running within the Kubernetes cluster. {% hint style="info" %} **Note**: Seldon Enterprise Platform does not support NGINX as an alternative for Istio. {% endhint %} The Seldon Enterprise Platform supports Istio ingress controllers. Seldon Core 1 and Seldon Core 2 integrate most effectively with an Istio ingress controller in your Seldon Enterprise Platform ecosystem. This table lists the features and the ingress controllers for Seldon Core 1 and Seldon Core 2.
Seldon Core 1Seldon Core 2
The features of Seldon Core 1 does not function without the Istio ingress controller.Seldon Core 2 is by design service mesh-agnostic and as a result you can choose any ingress controller you want. However, If you choose a non-Istio ingress controller it may restrict you to the more basic or limited functionality of Seldon Core 2.
Seldon Core uses Istio because it relies on a service mesh for traffic splitting and leverages Knative for drift and outlier detection, as well as inference event logging.Seldon Core 2 offers features such as multi-model serving and overcommit functionality and uses Kafka as a message queue for data-centric pipelines. These features work best with Istio ingress controller.
### Features of Istio ingress controller * Service mesh with advanced traffic management capabilities. * Required for effective use of Seldon Core 1. * Automatic configuration of ingress routes for Seldon Core 1 deployments. * Enables authorization of Seldon Core 1 deployments. * Manages traffic for rollout strategies, drift and outlier detection, and inference data logging for Seldon Core 1. * Supports both HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 (gRPC) traffic. * Provides TLS support for HTTPS and gRPCS. * Supports ingress routes for ML deployments. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.seldon.ai/seldon-enterprise-platform/production-environment/ingress-controller.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.