is owned by the mesh operator while the mesh admin owns the cluster running services deployed in the mesh. The mesh admin has no access to the external control plane cluster. Mesh operators can follow the <a href=https://github.com/istio/istio/wiki/External-Istiod-single-cluster-steps>external istiod single cluster step by step guide</a> to explore more on this. (Note: In some internal discussions among Istio maintainers, this model was previously referred to as &ldquo;central istiod&rdquo;.)</p><figure sty