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title: How does distributed tracing work with Istio?
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---

Istio integrates with distributed tracing systems in two different ways: [Envoy-based](#how-envoy-based-tracing-works) and [Mixer-based](#how-mixer-based-tracing-works) tracing integrations. For both tracing integration approaches, [applications are responsible for forwarding tracing headers](#istio-copy-headers) for subsequent outgoing requests.

You can find additional information in the Istio Distributed Tracing ([Jaeger](/docs/tasks/telemetry/distributed-tracing/jaeger/), [LightStep](/docs/tasks/telemetry/distributed-tracing/lightstep/), [Zipkin](/docs/tasks/telemetry/distributed-tracing/zipkin/)) Tasks and
in the [Envoy tracing docs](https://www.envoyproxy.io/docs/envoy/latest/intro/arch_overview/tracing#tracing).