By way of correction: Consul does not simply "round robin" DNS requests unless you configure it in a particularly naive manner. Prepared queries [1] and networ

By way of correction: Consul does not simply "round robin" DNS requests unless you configure it in a particularly naive manner. Prepared queries [1] and network tomography (which comes from the Serf underpinnings of the non-server agents) [2] allow for a much wider range of topologies just using DNS without requiring proxies (assuming well behaved client software, which is not a given by any stretch). Furthermore, Consul _does_ have a mesh as around 2 years ago - [3]. You are correct though that long caches subvert much of the benefit. [1]: https://www.consul.io/api/query.html https://www.consul.io/api/query.html [2]: https://www.consul.io/docs/internals/coordinates.html https://www.consul.io/docs/internals/coordinates.html [3]: https://www.consul.io/docs/connect/index.html https://www.consul.io/docs/connect/index.html