It's not ELI5, but the best explanation I've seen comes from Envoy-creator Matt Klein: https://blog.envoyproxy.io/service-mesh-data-plane-vs-control-plane-2774e

It's not ELI5, but the best explanation I've seen comes from Envoy-creator Matt Klein: https://blog.envoyproxy.io/service-mesh-data-plane-vs-control-plane-2774e720f7fc https://blog.envoyproxy.io/service-mesh-data-plane-vs-contro... "Istio is the control plane and Envoy is the data plane" "Ultimately, the goal of a control plane is to set policy that will eventually be enacted by the data plane."