API Traffic Management 101

by Mike Amundsen

Monitoring and managing API traffic can be a complicated undertaking. Most companies today need to deal with securing API traffic from outside their organizational boundaries as well as optimizing traffic between services running behind the company firewall. In this practical report, author Mike Amundsen introduces developers and network administrators to the basic concepts and challenges of monitoring and managing API traffic.

You’ll learn approaches for observing and controlling external traffic (known as the North/South model) and for optimizing internal traffic (the East/West model). You’ll also examine the business value of good API traffic practice that connects your business goals and internal progress measurements to useful traffic monitoring, reporting, and analysis.

Understand the challenges and advantages of initiating API traffic management
Examine the North/South and East/West models for handling API traffic
Monitor the health of your API system using traffic metrics and formulas
Explore security basics including API keys, authentication, authorization, and encryption
Maintain network reliability and resilience to provide a healthy and scalable infrastructure for your API platform
Learn options for diagnosing and automating your traffic management approach

Published December 1, 2019