[presspot]

Buoyant invented the service mesh concept and added that term to our vernacular as a way to describe Linkerd 1.x and similar systems. Istio was built using the same pattern as Linkerd 1.0. Those are "traditional", albeit in internet years not real years.

Linkerd 2.0 takes a fundamentally different approach. It's tiny, fast, lightweight and designed to add value as a service sidecar (installed on a single service) without any "mesh". If multiple service owners install Linkerd 2.0, it self-morphs into a mesh configuration and provides all of the value of a service mesh. This creates an installation and deployment pattern that is very practical and bottoms-up, delivering value to the individual service (and service owner) but also supporting a higher-level abstraction of a mesh at the platform level. This is a fundamental innovation and, hence, a new model for service mesh patterns versus the original, er, traditional model.