Kong API Gateway: Ingress, Auth & Rate Limits

Kong API Gateway on Kubernetes with Ingress, Authentication & Rate Limiting

What You'll Learn

  • Install and configure Kong API Gateway on Kubernetes using Helm charts
  • Set up ingress routing rules to provide external access to internal services
  • Implement API key authentication with consumers and secrets for secure access control
  • Configure rate limiting per consumer to prevent API abuse and DDoS attacks
  • Deploy Kong on both local development and cloud platforms with proper configurations

Description

Transform your Kubernetes applications from internal services to secure, production-ready APIs using Kong API Gateway. Starting with a grade submission API that requires port forwarding for access, you'll implement a complete API management solution that provides external access, authentication, and rate limiting capabilities.

You'll begin by installing Kong using Helm charts and configuring it as an Ingress controller to provide external access to your Kubernetes services. Learn to set up ingress routing rules that direct traffic from external clients to your internal services, eliminating the need for port forwarding and making your applications accessible to real users.

The tutorial progresses to implementing API key authentication using Kong's key-auth plugin. You'll create consumers, configure secrets with API keys, and set up authentication mechanisms that ensure only authorized clients can access your APIs. This hands-on approach demonstrates how to secure your services against unauthorized access while maintaining ease of use for legitimate clients.

Finally, you'll implement rate limiting to protect your services from abuse and potential DDoS attacks. Learn to configure per-consumer rate limits that allow fair usage while preventing any single client from overwhelming your system. The tutorial covers both the configuration and testing of these limits to ensure they work as expected.

This comprehensive guide covers Kong installation on both local development environments (Docker Desktop, Minikube) and cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud). You'll understand the differences between LoadBalancer and NodePort configurations, making this knowledge applicable to various deployment scenarios.

By the end, you'll have transformed a simple internal API into a robust, externally accessible service with enterprise-grade security and protection mechanisms, all managed through Kong's powerful API gateway platform.