Consul Connect provides a service-to-service connection authorization and encryption mechanism through mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) for secure mesh networks. To use these networks, ingress points like NGINX or HAProxy are required to act as gateways for external traffic to communicate with internal services. These proxies can be configured using consul-template to work as native ingress proxies, providing flexibility when performance is crucial. The example setup demonstrates how to create a robust ingress proxy using Consul Connect and popular 3rd-party proxies like NGINX or HAProxy.