Service Mesh
The Service Mesh enabled through SMI connects and manages messages between all pods and services in the cluster. Using this service mesh, traffic is steered within the cluster to finely control which NF components are part of the traffic flow.
Granular controls such as traffic percentage, or application-based traffic characteristics — for example, access point name (APN), subscription permanent identifier (SUPI), or other layer 7 attribute value pairs (AVPs) — are used to control traffic within the cluster. This control enables selective and precise upgrades, such as "canary upgrades". This limits risk and impact when deploying changes in-service and in production. It also affords the ability to selectively drain or decommission NFs.

Besides traffic management applications, the service mesh aids in tracking the flow of traffic between services and nodes, providing security to prevent unauthorized service access and isolating rogue services.