October DealsAmazon USOctober deal check: compare before you payAmazon US: current deals, useful picks and tech finds.Check DealsSlow PC?RecommendedPC slow today? Run a repair scan before it gets worseResolve common Windows issues and optimize system performance.Scan NowOctober DealsAmazon USDeal season is back - check today's better picksAmazon US: current deals, useful picks and tech finds.See Picks×
Skip to content
World desk3 min

Introduction to Clover: Wenjing Chu’s 2018 Open Networking Talk

Clover was presented in 2018 as a framework for building and operating cloud-native network services. Here are the talk’s design goals, timeline, and limits as historical documentation.
Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

Clover was a software framework for building network services as cloud-native microservice applications, not a consumer hardware product. In her October 12, 2018 presentation at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Networking Days in Shanghai, Wenjing Chu described its Kubernetes-and-Docker baseline and design goals for security, observability, validation, and automated deployment. The talk and the project documentation are historical; the sources cited here do not establish whether Clover is maintained or suitable for new deployments today.

What is Clover?

Chu’s slide deck defines Clover as “a framework stack to develop network services as cloud native micro-service applications that can be developed, deployed and operated with high degree of automation.” In this context, a network service could be a software network function, including an application or a management, control, or data plane function. The talk identified Kubernetes and Docker containers as Clover’s baseline. Wenjing Chu’s presentation

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

That framing made Clover a framework for composing and operating network functions as software services, rather than a single networking application or a hardware device. Its scope included the operational work around a service as well as the service itself.

What’s actually slowing this PC down?

Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

What did the 2018 talk say cloud native meant for networking?

The presentation organized Clover’s aims around several challenges that arise when network functions are built and run as microservices:

  • Segmentation, traffic control, and security: applying service-mesh concepts to control communication among service components and provide unified security.
  • Visibility and operations: tracing, monitoring, and visibility intended to help debug services and operate them.
  • Validation: automating checks of network-service characteristics.
  • Continuous deployment: automating service rollout and related operations.
  • Flexible deployment: supporting deployment across diverse environments.

These are design areas presented in 2018, not proof that every capability was complete, production-ready, or remains supported. The deck also discussed Clovisor, a network-tracing effort that used Clover with IOVisor/eBPF. Its discussion of Clovisor in relation to Istio reflected the talk’s historical framing; it should not be read as a current performance comparison or recommendation. Presentation slides

Who presented the talk, and where?

The Linux Foundation event agenda lists the session as “OPNFV Clover: Delivering Cloud Native Network Services” at Open Source Networking Days in Shanghai on October 12, 2018. The agenda identifies Chu as Senior Director of Open Source and Research at Huawei. The slide deck identifies her as Senior Director of Open Source & Research at Futurewei Technologies, Inc.; those are the affiliations given by the two sources, respectively. The event page describes the gathering as bringing developers, users, and communities together around open networking projects. Linux Foundation event agenda

What was Clover’s historical timeline?

The presentation’s milestone slide records these dates and plans:

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.
Milestone What the 2018 deck says
Project creation October 2017
Fraser release April 2018
Gambia release October 2018
Third release Planned for April 2019; the slide records a plan, not confirmation that it shipped

The event setting and dates place the presentation within a period of active work on open networking projects; they do not establish the project’s later status. Event context Milestone slide

What do the old Clover guides cover?

Legacy Clover documentation describes additional project material and components, including a sample service, an Istio 1.0 integration, clover-collector, visibility and analytics, cloverctl, and Clovisor. The user guide discusses the Hunter release. These documents help show the historical breadth of the project, but they do not establish compatibility with present-day Kubernetes or Istio versions, current support, or production readiness. Clover user guide Clover configuration guide

Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Support on Ko-Fi

What should a modern reader take from the presentation?

Read Clover as a historical approach to treating network functions as cloud-native applications, with operational automation and visibility included in the design problem. The 2018 talk is useful for understanding that ambition and the components it discussed; it is not current deployment guidance. The reviewed presentation and legacy guides do not settle whether Clover is maintained today or whether its dependencies remain compatible in 2026.

If evaluating Clover or comparing it with another platform, check these points against current project documentation and support information:

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.
  • Which network functions the platform actually supports.
  • Compatibility with the Kubernetes versions and CNI plugins in the intended environment.
  • What its observability covers, including the relevant network and application layers.
  • The service-mesh overhead and security or policy model.
  • How deployment automation works and which releases are currently supported.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Special offer. See more information about Outbyte and uninstall instructions. Please review EULA and Privacy policy.

More from the Wire

  1. World desk4 min
    How to Spot an AI Voice Scam Before Sending MoneyDon’t rely on how a caller sounds. Pause, call back through a known number, and verify the emergency with another trusted person before sending money.
  2. Mountain View desk4 min
    Google’s SynthID Detector: How to Check AI-Generated Images, Video and AudioGoogle’s SynthID Detector looks for an embedded watermark in supported images, video and audio. Here is what its results do—and do not—show.
  3. Redmond desk20 min
    How to create a link to File or Folder in Windows 11Windows 11 gives you several ways to point to a file or folder without moving or duplicating it. You can create a desktop shortcut,…
Recommended PC Tool
Recommended PC Tool
Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?Free driver scan
Windows Errors? Fix Them Before They SpreadFree repair scan

Two free Windows tools

One Free Minute Could Fix That PC

Before you go - each of these free tools takes about a minute and tackles what quietly slows a Windows PC down.

Special offer. View Outbyte info, uninstall instructions, EULA, and Privacy Policy.