API Gateway is required to manage and monitor microservice landscapes. However, the volume of communication among microservices can cause network latency and security issues for API Gateways in such environments. Lightweight gateways are therefore helpful for supplementing API Gateway and prevent bottlenecks.

Microgateway is a lightweight gateway that enables microservices to communicate with each other directly, without involving API Gateway. Microgateway enforces policies that perform authentication, traffic monitoring, and traffic management. You can enforce protection policies on Microgateway to ensure a secure communication channel among microservices. Microgateway works withAPI Gateway or as a standalone solution to control API access to microservices in a distributed environment.

A common scenario is to spread out your API traffic burden by using API Gateway to handle less trusted external, or north-south, traffic while using Microgateways to handle more trusted internal, or east-west, traffic.