KNet: .NET suite for Apache Kafka™

KNet is a comprehensive .NET suite for Apache Kafka™ that provides direct access to all Apache Kafka™ APIs and features: Producer, Consumer, Admin, Streams, Connect, and KRaft backend support.

KNet client-side features are also compatible with any broker that implements the Kafka wire protocol — see Backend compatibility below.

Libraries and Tools

KNet	KNetCLI	KNet.Templates	KNetPS	KNetConnect

Project disclaimer

KNet is a suite for Apache Kafka™, maintained by MASES Group and open to community contributions. Its primary scope is to support other MASES Group projects — both open-source and commercial — though it is freely available for any use. Dedicated community and commercial subscription plans are available. The repository and releases may contain bugs. The release cycle follows the Apache Kafka™ release cycle, with additional releases driven by critical issues or enhancement requests from this or other dependent projects.

Looking for Apache Kafka™ expertise? MASES Group can help you design, build, deploy, and manage Apache Kafka™ clusters and streaming applications. Find out more.

Scope of the project

This project aims to create a set of libraries and tools to directly access, from .NET, all the features available in the Apache Kafka™ binary distribution.

There are many client libraries written to manage communication with Apache Kafka™. Conversely, this project uses the Java™ packages released from The Apache Foundation directly, providing several benefits:

all implemented features are available at no extra implementation costs — see KNet usage;
avoids any third-party communication protocol implementation;
access to all features made available from Apache Kafka™: the most important are Apache Kafka™ Streams and Apache Kafka™ Connect, which have no native C# implementation;
measured high performance in many operating conditions.

Currently the project tries to support, at our best, the supported Apache Kafka™ binary distribution:

KNet	State	Apache Kafka™	Branch
3.x.x	Active	4.x.x	master
2.9.*	Active	3.9.x	release/2.9.X
2.8.*	Deprecated	3.8.*	release/2.8.X
2.7.*	Deprecated	3.7.*	release/2.7.X
2.6.*	Deprecated	3.6.*	release/2.6.X

The Apache Kafka™ packages are downloaded from:

kafka-streams-scala_2.13	kafka-tools	kafka-shell

connect-mirror	connect-file	connect-basic-auth-extension	trogdor
---	---	---	---

Backend compatibility

KNet uses the official Apache Kafka™ Java client packages directly. This architecture has a direct impact on backend compatibility: not all KNet features have the same compatibility scope.

Client-side features — Producer, Consumer, Admin Client, Kafka Streams, KNet Streams SDK, KNet Connect SDK, KNetPS scriptable cmdlets — communicate with the broker exclusively through the Kafka wire protocol and are therefore compatible with any broker that implements it, not only Apache Kafka™ itself.

Examples of compatible brokers: Redpanda, Amazon MSK, Confluent Platform / Cloud, Aiven for Apache Kafka™, IBM Event Streams, WarpStream, AutoMQ, and others.

Important: KNet also includes server-side features to start and manage Apache Kafka™ broker nodes, ZooKeeper™ nodes, and KRaft controllers (via KNetCLI, KNetPS, and Docker images). These features are specific to Apache Kafka™ and are not applicable to alternative brokers.

See Supported Backends for the full compatibility matrix covering all KNet feature areas.

Community and contributions

If you find KNet useful:

Leave a ⭐ on the repository
Open issues to report bugs 🐛 or request features
Submit Pull Requests to improve the project