# F5 NGINX Gateway Fabric



## About

NGINX Gateway Fabric provides an implementation of the [Gateway API](https://gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io/) using [NGINX](https://nginx.org/) as the data plane. The goal of the project is to implement the core Gateway APIs needed to configure an HTTP or TCP/UDP load balancer, reverse proxy, or API gateway for Kubernetes applications.

## Featured content

  
### [Get started](/nginx-gateway-fabric/get-started)

    Use kind to quickly deploy and test a NGINX Gateway Fabric cluster.
  

  
### [Deploy NGINX Gateway Fabric](/nginx-gateway-fabric/install)

    Choose how to deploy NGINX Gateway Fabric in production.
  

  
### [Gateway API compatibility](/nginx-gateway-fabric/overview/gateway-api-compatibility/)

    View how much of the Gateway API NGINX Gateway Fabric supports.
  

## Design

NGINX Gateway Fabric separates the control plane and data plane into distinct deployments. The control plane interacts with the Kubernetes API, watching for Gateway API resources. 

When a new Gateway resource is provisioned, it dynamically creates and manages a corresponding NGINX data plane Deployment and Service.

Each NGINX data plane pod consists of an NGINX container integrated with [NGINX Agent](https://github.com/nginx/agent). The control plane translates Gateway API resources into NGINX configurations and sends these configurations to the agent to ensure consistent traffic management.

This design enables centralized management of multiple Gateways while ensuring that each NGINX instance stays aligned with the cluster’s current configuration.

For more information, see the [Gateway architecture](/ngf/overview/gateway-architecture.md) topic.

## More information

  
### [Changelog](/nginx-gateway-fabric/changelog)

    Review the changes from the latest releases.
  

  
### [Technical specifications](/nginx-gateway-fabric/reference/technical-specifications/)

    Check which versions of NGINX Gateway Fabric match the API.
  

  
### [Routing traffic to applications](/nginx-gateway-fabric/traffic-management/basic-routing/)

    Create simple rules for directing network traffic with HTTPRoute resources.
  

  
### [Secure traffic using Let's Encrypt](/nginx-gateway-fabric/traffic-security/integrate-cert-manager/)

    Implement HTTPS with Let's Encrypt to secure client-server communication.