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When DevOps and developers hit network slowdowns, the most difficult part is usually determining where the issue really is. Is it infrastructure, the application layer, or something lurking in the middle of network communication? That is where eBPF traffic tracing is revolutionizing things.

eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) enables you to execute custom programs securely within the Linux kernel. Rather than using packet captures or cumbersome external tools, eBPF traces network traffic at the kernel level in real time. This provides developers and SREs with detailed insight into what's going on over connections—latency spiking, packet loss, or hotspots.

The true power of eBPF traffic tracing is that it will not slow your system down like older tracing techniques. Because it traces within the kernel, the overhead is small, so it is acceptable even for production load. This implies that teams can identify bottlenecks in a quick manner without affecting performance.

Another major win is marrying eBPF with test beds. For instance, Keploy integrates against actual traffic to automate API test cases. If you couple this with insights from eBPF, you don't only observe the bottleneck but can replay realistic traffic patterns to test fixes. This builds much tighter feedback loops across observability and test.

For developers working with distributed systems, microservices, or high-throughput APIs, eBPF provides observability that was otherwise extremely challenging to obtain. With tracing at the kernel level and correlating traffic patterns with app behavior, bottlenecks are easier and more reliably solved.