The latest beta release of HashiCorp Consul 1.6 introduces significant features to support Layer 7 routing and traffic management, including mesh gateways that transparently and securely route service traffic across multiple regions, platforms, and clouds. This release builds upon the existing service mesh solution, Consul Connect, which was introduced in version 1.2. The new features enable advanced traffic management patterns for service-to-service requests, increased reliability with advanced service failover, and deployment patterns such as HTTP path-based routing. Mesh gateways are a key component of this feature set, enabling services in separate networking environments to communicate with each other securely. Consul 1.6 also includes additional configuration entry types that allow users to create complex traffic management configurations using the HashiCorp Configuration Language or JSON. The release is now available for download and invites users to experiment with these new features, while cautioning against using the beta build in production environments until further testing and stabilization are completed.