rpxy: A simple and ultrafast reverse-proxy serving multiple domain names with TLS termination, written in Rust

WIP Project

Introduction

rpxy [ahr-pik-see] is an implementation of simple and lightweight reverse-proxy with some additional features. The implementation is based on hyper, rustls and tokio, i.e., written in Rust ¹. Our rpxy routes multiple host names to appropriate backend application servers while serving TLS connections.

By default, rpxy provides the TLS connection sanitization by correctly binding a certificate used to establish a secure channel with the backend application. Specifically, it always keeps the consistency between the given SNI (server name indication) in ClientHello of the underlying TLS and the domain name given by the overlaid HTTP HOST header (or URL in Request line) ². Additionally, as a somewhat unstable feature, our rpxy can handle the brand-new HTTP/3 connection thanks to quinn, s2n-quic and hyperium/h3.³ Furthermore, rpxy supports the automatic issuance and renewal of certificates via TLS-ALPN-01 (RFC8737) of ACME protocol (RFC8555) thanks to rustls-acme, and the hybridized post-quantum key exchange X25519MLKEM768⁴ for TLS/QUIC incoming and outgoing initiation thanks to rustls-post-quantum.

This project is still work-in-progress. But it is already working in some production environments and serves a number of domain names. Furthermore it significantly outperforms NGINX and Caddy, e.g., 1.5x faster than NGINX, in the setting of a very simple HTTP reverse-proxy scenario (See bench directory).

Installing/Building an Executable Binary of rpxy

Building from Source

You can build an executable binary yourself by checking out this Git repository.

# Cloning the git repository
% git clone https://github.com/junkurihara/rust-rpxy
% cd rust-rpxy

# Update submodules
% git submodule update --init

# Build (default: QUIC and HTTP/3 is enabled using `quinn`)
% cargo build --release

# If you want to use `s2n-quic`, build as follows. You may need several additional dependencies.
% cargo build --no-default-features --features http3-s2n --release

Then you have an executive binary rust-rpxy/target/release/rpxy.

Package Installation for Linux (RPM/DEB)

You can find the Jenkins CI/CD build scripts for rpxy in the ./build directory.

Prebuilt packages for Linux RPM and DEB are available at https://rpxy.gamerboy59.dev, provided by @Gamerboy59.

Note that we do not have an option of installation via crates.io, i.e., cargo install, at this point since some dependencies are not published yet. Alternatively, you can use docker image (see below) as the easiest way for amd64 environment.

Usage

rpxy always refers to a configuration file in TOML format, e.g., config.toml. You can find an example of the configuration file, config-example.toml, in this repository.

You can run rpxy with a configuration file like

% ./target/release/rpxy --config config.toml

If you specify -w option along with the config file path, rpxy tracks the change of config.toml in the real-time manner and apply the change immediately without restarting the process.

The full help messages are given follows.

usage: rpxy [OPTIONS] --config <FILE>

Options:
  -c, --config <FILE>  Configuration file path like ./config.toml
  -w, --watch          Activate dynamic reloading of the config file via continuous monitoring
  -h, --help           Print help
  -V, --version        Print version

That's all!

Basic Configuration

First Step: Cleartext HTTP Reverse Proxy

The most basic configuration of config.toml is given like the following.

listen_port = 80

[apps.app1]
server_name = 'app1.example.com'
reverse_proxy = [{ upstream = [{ location = 'app1.local:8080' }] }]

In the above setting, rpxy listens on port 80 (TCP) and serves incoming cleartext HTTP request including a app1.example.com in its HOST header or URL in its Request line. For example, request messages like the followings.

GET http://app1.example.com/path/to HTTP/1.1\r\n

or

GET /path/to HTTP/1.1\r\n
HOST: app1.example.com\r\n

Otherwise, say, a request to other.example.com is simply rejected with the status code 40x.

If you want to host multiple and distinct domain names in a single IP address/port, simply create multiple app."<app_name>" entries in config file like

default_app = "app1"

[apps.app1]
server_name = "app1.example.com"
#...

[apps.app2]
server_name = "app2.example.org"
#...

Here we note that by specifying default_app entry, HTTP requests will be served by the specified application if HOST header or URL in Request line doesn't match any server_names in reverse_proxy entries. For HTTPS requests, it will be rejected since the secure connection cannot be established for the unknown server name.

HTTPS to Backend Application

The request message will be routed to the backend application specified with the domain name app1.localdomain:8080 or IP address over cleartext HTTP. If the backend channel needs to serve TLS like forwarding to https://app1.localdomain:8080, you need to enable a tls option for the location.

revese_proxy = [
  { location = 'app1.localdomain:8080', tls = true }
]

Load Balancing

You can specify multiple backend locations in the reverse_proxy array for load-balancing with an appropriate load_balance option. Currently it works in the manner of round-robin, in the random fashion, or round-robin with session-persistance using cookie. if load_balance is not specified, the first backend location is always chosen.

[apps."app_name"]
server_name = 'app1.example.com'
reverse_proxy = [
  { location = 'app1.local:8080' },
  { location = 'app2.local:8000' }
]
load_balance = 'round_robin' # or 'random' or 'sticky'

Second Step: Terminating TLS

First of all, you need to specify a port listen_port_tls listening the HTTPS traffic, separately from HTTP port (listen_port). Then, serving an HTTPS endpoint can be easily done for your desired application just by specifying TLS certificates and private keys in PEM files.

listen_port = 80
listen_port_tls = 443

[apps."app_name"]
server_name = 'app1.example.com'
tls = { tls_cert_path = 'server.crt',  tls_cert_key_path = 'server.key' }
reverse_proxy = [{ upstream = [{ location = 'app1.local:8080' }] }]

In the above setting, both cleartext HTTP requests to port 80 and ciphertext HTTPS requests to port 443 are routed to the backend app1.local:8080 in the same fashion. If you don't need to serve cleartext requests, just remove listen_port = 80 and specify only listen_port_tls = 443.

We should note that the private key specified by tls_cert_key_path must be in PKCS8 format. (See TIPS to convert PKCS1 formatted private key to PKCS8 one.)

Redirecting Cleartext HTTP Requests to HTTPS

In the current Web, we believe it is common to serve everything through HTTPS rather than HTTP, and hence https redirection is often used for HTTP requests. When you specify both listen_port and listen_port_tls, you can enable an option of such redirection by making https_redirection true.

tls = { https_redirection = true, tls_cert_path = 'server.crt', tls_cert_key_path = 'server.key' }

If it is true, rpxy returns the status code 301 to the cleartext request with new location https://<requested_host>/<requested_query_and_path> served over TLS.

Third Step: More Flexible Routing Based on URL Path

rpxy can serves, of course, routes requests to multiple backend destination according to the path information. The routing information can be specified for each application (server_name) as follows.

listen_port_tls = 443

[apps.app1]
server_name = 'app1.example.com'
tls = { https_redirection = true, tls_cert_path = 'server.crt', tls_cert_key_path = 'server.key' }

[[apps.app1.reverse_proxy]]
upstream = [
  { location = 'default.backend.local' }
]

[[apps.app1.reverse_proxy]]
path = '/path'
upstream = [
  { location = 'path.backend.local' }
]

[[apps.app1.reverse_proxy]]
path = '/path/another'
replace_path = '/path'
upstream = [
  { location = 'another.backend.local' }
]

In the above example, a request to https://app1.example.com/path/to?query=ok matches the second reverse_proxy entry in the longest-prefix-matching manner, and will be routed to path.backend.local with preserving path and query information, i.e., served as http://path.backend.local/path/to?query=ok.

On the other hand, a request to https://app1.example.com/path/another/xx?query=ng matching the third entry is routed with being rewritten its path information specified by replace_path option. Namely, the matched /path/another part is rewritten with /path, and it is served as http://another.backend.local/path/xx?query=ng.

Requests that doesn't match any paths will be routed by the first entry that doesn't have the path option, which means the default destination. In other words, unless every reverse_proxy entry has an explicit path option, rpxy rejects requests that don't match any paths.

Simple Path-based Routing

This path-based routing option would be enough in many cases. For example, you can serve multiple applications with one domain by specifying unique path to each application. More specifically, see an example below.

[apps.app]
server_name = 'app.example.com'
#...

[[apps.app.reverse_proxy]]
path = '/subapp1'
replace_path = '/'
upstream = [ { location = 'subapp1.local' } ]

[[apps.app.reverse_proxy]]
path = '/subapp2'
replace_path = '/'
upstream = [ { location = 'subapp2.local' } ]

[[apps.app.reverse_proxy]]
path = '/subapp3'
replace_path = '/'
upstream = [ { location = 'subapp3.local' } ]

This example configuration explains a very frequent situation of path-based routing. When a request to app.example.com/subappN routes to sbappN.local by replacing a path part /subappN to /.

More Options

Since it is currently a work-in-progress project, we are frequently adding new options. We first add new option entries in the config-example.toml as examples. So please refer to it for up-to-date options. We will prepare a comprehensive documentation for all options.

Using Docker Image

You can also use docker image hosted on Docker Hub and GitHub Container Registry instead of directly executing the binary. See ./docker directory for more details.

Example

./bench directory could be a very simple example of configuration of rpxy. This can also be an example of an example of docker use case.

Experimental Features and Caveats

HTTP/3

rpxy can serves HTTP/3 requests thanks to quinn, s2n-quic and hyperium/h3. To enable this experimental feature, add an entry experimental.h3 in your config.toml like follows. Any values in the entry like alt_svc_max_age are optional.

[experimental.h3]
alt_svc_max_age = 3600
request_max_body_size = 65536
max_concurrent_connections = 10000
max_concurrent_bidistream = 100
max_concurrent_unistream = 100
max_idle_timeout = 10

Client Authentication via Client Certificates

Client authentication is enabled when apps."app_name".tls.client_ca_cert_path is set for the domain specified by "app_name" like

[apps.localhost]
server_name = 'localhost' # Domain name
tls = { https_redirection = true, tls_cert_path = './server.crt', tls_cert_key_path = './server.key', client_ca_cert_path = './client_cert.ca.crt' }

However, currently we have a limitation on HTTP/3 support for applications that enables client authentication. If an application is set with client authentication, HTTP/3 doesn't work for the application.

Hybrid Caching Feature with Temporary File and On-Memory Cache

If [experimental.cache] is specified in config.toml, you can leverage the local caching feature using temporary files and on-memory objects. An example configuration is as follows.

# If this specified, file cache feature is enabled
[experimental.cache]
cache_dir = './cache'                # optional. default is "./cache" relative to the current working directory
max_cache_entry = 1000               # optional. default is 1k
max_cache_each_size = 65535          # optional. default is 64k
max_cache_each_size_on_memory = 4096 # optional. default is 4k if 0, it is always file cache.

A storable (in the context of an HTTP message) response is stored if its size is less than or equal to max_cache_each_size in bytes. If it is also less than or equal to max_cache_each_size_on_memory, it is stored as an on-memory object. Otherwise, it is stored as a temporary file. Note that max_cache_each_size must be larger or equal to max_cache_each_size_on_memory. Also note that once rpxy restarts or the config is updated, the cache is totally eliminated not only from the on-memory table but also from the file system.

Automated Certificate Issuance and Renewal via TLS-ALPN-01 ACME protocol

This is a brand-new feature and maybe still unstable. Thanks to the rustls-acme, the automatic issuance and renewal of certificates are finally available in rpxy. To enable this feature, you need to specify the following entries in config.toml.

# ACME enabled domain name.
# ACME will be used to get a certificate for the server_name with ACME tls-alpn-01 protocol.
# Note that acme option must be specified in the experimental section.
[apps.localhost_with_acme]
server_name = 'example.org'
reverse_proxy = [{ upstream = [{ location = 'example.com', tls = true }] }]
tls = { https_redirection = true, acme = true } # do not specify tls_cert_path and/or tls_cert_key_path

For the ACME enabled domain, the following settings are referred to acquire a certificate.

# Global ACME settings. Unless specified, ACME is disabled.
[experimental.acme]
dir_url = "https://localhost:14000/dir" # optional. default is "https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory"
email = "[email protected]"
registry_path = "./acme_registry"       # optional. default is "./acme_registry" relative to the current working directory

The above configuration is common to all ACME enabled domains. Note that the https port must be open to the public to verify the domain ownership.

TIPS

Set custom port for HTTPS redirection

Consider a case where rpxy is running on a container. Then when the container manager maps port A (e.g., 80/443) of the host to port B (e.g., 8080/8443) of the container for http and https, rpxy must be configured with port B for listen_port and listen_port_tls. However, when you want to set http_redirection=true for some backend apps, rpxy issues the redirection response 301 with the port B by default, which is not accessible from the outside of the container. To avoid this, you can set a custom port for the redirection response by specifying https_redirection_port in config.toml. In this case, port A should be set for https_redirection_port, then the redirection response 301 will be issued with the port A.

listen_port = 8080
listen_port_tls = 8443
https_redirection_port = 443

Using Private Key Issued by Let's Encrypt

If you obtain certificates and private keys from Let's Encrypt, you have PKCS1-formatted private keys. So you need to convert such retrieved private keys into PKCS8 format to use in rpxy.

The easiest way is to use openssl by

% openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -nocrypt \
    -in yoru_domain_from_le.key \
    -inform PEM \
    -out your_domain_pkcs8.key.pem \
    -outform PEM

Client Authentication using Client Certificate Signed by Your Own Root CA

First, you need to prepare a CA certificate used to verify client certificate. If you do not have one, you can generate CA key and certificate by OpenSSL commands as follows. Note that rustls accepts X509v3 certificates and reject SHA-1, and that rpxy relys on Version 3 extension fields of KeyIDs of Subject Key Identifier and Authority Key Identifier.

1. Generate CA key of secp256v1, CSR, and then generate CA certificate that will be set for tls.client_ca_cert_path for each server app in config.toml.

% openssl genpkey -algorithm EC -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -out client.ca.key

% openssl req -new -key client.ca.key -out client.ca.csr
...
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) []: ...
State or Province Name (full name) []: ...
Locality Name (eg, city) []: ...
Organization Name (eg, company) []: ...
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []: ...
Common Name (eg, fully qualified host name) []: <Should not input CN>
Email Address []: ...

% openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -sha256 -in client.ca.csr -signkey client.ca.key -out client.ca.crt -extfile client.ca.ext

2. Generate a client key of secp256v1 and certificate signed by CA key.

% openssl genpkey -algorithm EC -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:prime256v1 -out client.key

% openssl req -new -key client.key -out client.csr
...
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) []:
State or Province Name (full name) []:
Locality Name (eg, city) []:
Organization Name (eg, company) []:
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (eg, fully qualified host name) []: <Should not input CN>
Email Address []:

% openssl x509 -req -days 365 -sha256 -in client.csr -CA client.ca.crt -CAkey client.ca.key -CAcreateserial -out client.crt -extfile client.ext

Now you have a client key client.key and certificate client.crt (version 3). pfx (p12) file can be retrieved as

% openssl pkcs12 -export -inkey client.key -in client.crt -certfile client.ca.crt -out client.pfx

Note that on MacOS, a pfx generated by OpenSSL 3.0.6 cannot be imported to MacOS KeyChain Access. We generated the sample pfx using LibreSSL 2.8.3 instead OpenSSL.

All of sample certificate files are found in ./example-certs/ directory.

(Work Around) Deployment on Ubuntu 22.04LTS using docker behind ufw

Basically, docker automatically manage your iptables if you use the port-mapping option, i.e., --publish for docker run or ports in docker-compose.yml. This means you do not need to manually expose your port, e.g., 443 TCP/UDP for HTTPS, using ufw-like management command.

However, we found that if you want to use the brand-new UDP-based protocol, HTTP/3, on rpxy, you need to explicitly expose your HTTPS port by using ufw-like command.

% sudo ufw allow 443
% sudo ufw enable

Your docker container can receive only TCP-based connection, i.e., HTTP/2 or before, unless you manually manage the port. We see that this is weird and expect that it is a kind of bug (of docker? ubuntu? or something else?). But at least for Ubuntu 22.04LTS, you need to handle it as above.

Managing rpxy via web interface

Check a third party project Gamerboy59/rpxy-webui to manage rpxy via web interface.

Other TIPS

todo!

License

rpxy is free, open-source software licensed under MIT License.

You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository.

Contributors are more than welcome!

Footnotes

1. Doubtfully can be claimed to be written in pure Rust since current rpxy is based on aws-lc-rs for cryptographic operations. ↩

2. We should note that NGINX doesn't guarantee such a consistency by default. To this end, you have to add if statement in the configuration file in NGINX. ↩

3. HTTP/3 libraries are mutually exclusive. You need to explicitly specify s2n-quic with --no-default-features flag. Also note that if you build rpxy with s2n-quic, then it requires openssl just for building the package. ↩

4. This is already a default feature. Also note that X25519MLKEM768 is still a draft version yet this is widely used on the Internet. ↩