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59 lines
5.0 KiB
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59 lines
5.0 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Traefik Proxy Documentation"
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description: "Traefik Proxy, an open-source Edge Router, auto-discovers configurations and supports major orchestrators, like Kubernetes. Read the technical documentation."
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---
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# What is Traefik?
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Traefik is an [open-source](https://github.com/traefik/traefik) *Application Proxy* that makes publishing your services a fun and easy experience.
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It receives requests on behalf of your system, identifies which components are responsible for handling them, and routes them securely.
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What sets Traefik apart, besides its many features, is that it automatically discovers the right configuration for your services.
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The magic happens when Traefik inspects your infrastructure, where it finds relevant information and discovers which service serves which request.
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Traefik is natively compliant with every major cluster technology, such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, AWS, and [the list goes on](./reference/install-configuration/providers/overview.md); and can handle many at the same time. (It even works for legacy software running on bare metal.)
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With Traefik, there is no need to maintain and synchronize a separate configuration file: everything happens automatically, in real time (no restarts, no connection interruptions).
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With Traefik, you spend time developing and deploying new features to your system, not on configuring and maintaining its working state.
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And if your needs change, you can add API gateway and API management capabilities seamlessly to your existing Traefik deployments. It takes less than a minute, there’s no rip-and-replace, and all your configurations are preserved. See this in action in [our API gateway demo video](https://info.traefik.io/watch-traefik-api-gw-demo?cta=docs).
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!!! quote "From the Traefik Maintainer Team"
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When developing Traefik, our main goal is to make it easy to use, and we're sure you'll enjoy it.
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## Personas
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Traefik supports different needs depending on your background. We keep three user personas in mind as we build and organize these docs:
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- **Beginners**: You are new to Traefik or new to reverse proxies. You want simple, guided steps to set things up without diving too deep into advanced topics.
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- **DevOps Engineers**: You manage infrastructure or clusters (Docker, Kubernetes, or other orchestrators). You integrate Traefik into your environment and value reliability, performance, and streamlined deployments.
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- **Developers**: You create and deploy applications or APIs. You focus on how to expose your services through Traefik, apply routing rules, and integrate it with your development workflow.
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## Core Concepts
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Traefik’s main concepts help you understand how requests flow to your services:
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- [Entrypoints](./reference/install-configuration/entrypoints.md) are the network entry points into Traefik. They define the port that will receive the packets and whether to listen for TCP or UDP.
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- [Routers](./reference/routing-configuration/http/router/rules-and-priority.md) are in charge of connecting incoming requests to the services that can handle them. In the process, routers may use pieces of [middleware](./reference/routing-configuration/http/middlewares/overview.md) to update the request or act before forwarding the request to the service.
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- [Services](./reference/routing-configuration/http/load-balancing/service.md) are responsible for configuring how to reach the actual services that will eventually handle the incoming requests.
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- [Providers](./reference/install-configuration/providers/overview.md) are infrastructure components, whether orchestrators, container engines, cloud providers, or key-value stores. The idea is that Traefik queries the provider APIs in order to find relevant information about routing, and when Traefik detects a change, it dynamically updates the routes.
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These concepts work together to manage your traffic from the moment a request arrives until it reaches your application.
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## How to Use the Documentation
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- **Navigation**: Each main section focuses on a specific stage of working with Traefik - installing, exposing services, observing, extending & migrating.
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Use the sidebar to navigate to the section that is most appropriate for your needs.
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- **Practical Examples**: You will see code snippets and configuration examples for different environments (YAML/TOML, Labels, & Tags).
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- **Reference**: When you need to look up technical details, our reference section provides a deep dive into configuration options and key terms.
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!!! info
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Have a question? Join our [Community Forum](https://community.traefik.io "Link to Traefik Community Forum") to discuss, learn, and connect with the Traefik community.
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Using Traefik OSS in Production? Consider our enterprise-grade [API Gateway](https://info.traefik.io/watch-traefik-api-gw-demo?cta=doc) or our [24/7/365 OSS Support](https://info.traefik.io/request-commercial-support?cta=doc).
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Explore our API Gateway upgrade via [this short demo video](https://info.traefik.io/watch-traefik-api-gw-demo?cta=doc).
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