In September 2022, we shared that Cloudflare was working on its own custom solution called Pingora to power its reverse proxy needs. Plans were also laid out to open source it in the future. Well, that future has arrived, and Pingora is now open-source!
In an exciting move, Cloudflare has announced the open-sourcing of Pingora, an in-house built advanced Rust framework pivotal in powering the services that manage a significant volume of internet traffic worldwide under the Apache License version 2.0.
And who knows better than Cloudflare when it comes to managing huge traffic volumes? For your information, they handle more than 10% of all HTTP/HTTPS world Internet traffic. Moreover, the Cloudflare network globally serves over 25 million HTTP requests each second. Those are pretty impressive numbers.
Pingora, as detailed in Cloudflare’s recent communications, is an asynchronous, multithreaded Rust framework designed to facilitate the development of HTTP proxy services. It has demonstrated its robustness and scalability by handling nearly a quadrillion internet requests across Cloudflare’s extensive network.
The framework is now being shared with the wider community, aiming to foster a more secure, efficient, and resilient internet beyond Cloudflare’s infrastructure.
The initiative to open source Pingora, in collaboration with the Internet Security Research Group’s Prossimo project, aligns with the increasing recognition of the importance of memory safety in software development. In this area, the Rust programming language excels.
By providing a memory-safe framework, Cloudflare minimizes the risk of security vulnerabilities and enhances overall productivity in developing new features.
Pingora stands out for its versatility, offering libraries and APIs that support a wide range of protocols, including HTTP/1, HTTP/2, TLS, and TCP/UDP. Its capabilities extend beyond proxying, encompassing customizable load balancing, failover strategies, and compliance with security standards.
For those prioritizing security and performance or requiring advanced customization in their services, Pingora presents a compelling solution. Its design facilitates a more memory-safe alternative to traditional C/C++ services and efficiency gains that are particularly beneficial for performance-sensitive applications.
But the framework’s open-sourcing is just the beginning. Cloudflare envisions Pingora’s adoption for building various internet services, with future collaborations to expand its reach and applicability. However, it’s important to note that API stability is not yet guaranteed, and current support is focused on Unix-based operating systems.
For further details, check out Cloudflare’s official announcement. You can also find the source code on the project’s GitHub page, which is now available to the public.
