.6/docs/concepts/policy-and-control/mixer.html">Mixer</a> is in the request path, it is natural to question how it impacts overall system availability and latency. A common refrain we hear when people first glance at Istio architecture diagrams is “Isn’t this just introducing a single point of failure?”</p><p>In this post, we’ll dig deeper and cover the design principles that underpin Mixer and the surprising fact Mixer actually increases overall mesh availability and reduces average request latency