Cilium is widely considered a modern, high-performance solution for Kubernetes networking—and rightfully so. But not every cluster benefits from the additional complexity of eBPF, Hubble, and deep kernel interventions. In this field report, we share our real-world learnings with Cilium in a production AWS EKS cluster, why we eventually pulled the plug, and why "boring" network setups are often the more economical and resilient choice for many teams.
