Explore the intricacies of service mesh performance characterization in this 26-minute conference talk from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021. Delve into the methodology for determining Envoy's throughput and latency, identify gaps in benchmark tools, and understand common pitfalls in measurements. Learn about the impact of scaling Envoy on latency and hardware utilization, examine benchmark results using Envoy sandboxes, and discover how to customize Envoy for telco-grade performance with hardware offloads. Gain valuable insights into the factors influencing mesh performance in production environments and the importance of considering runtime environment, hardware settings, and testing methodologies.