nghttp2
v1.64.0
This is an implementation of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol version 2 in C.
The framing layer of HTTP/2 is implemented as a reusable C library. On top of that, we have implemented an HTTP/2 client, server and proxy. We have also developed load test and benchmarking tools for HTTP/2.
An HPACK encoder and decoder are available as a public API.
nghttp2 was originally developed based on RFC 7540 HTTP/2 and RFC 7541 HPACK - Header Compression for HTTP/2. Now we are updating our code to implement RFC 9113.
The nghttp2 code base was forked from the spdylay (https://github.com/tatsuhiro-t/spdylay) project.
The following endpoints are available to try out our nghttp2 implementation.
https://nghttp2.org/ (TLS + ALPN and HTTP/3)
This endpoint supports h2, h2-16, h2-14, and
http/1.1 via ALPN and requires TLSv1.2 for HTTP/2
connection.
It also supports HTTP/3.
http://nghttp2.org/ (HTTP Upgrade and HTTP/2 Direct)
h2c and http/1.1.
The following package is required to build the libnghttp2 library:
To build the documentation, you need to install:
If you need libnghttp2 (C library) only, then the above packages are
all you need. Use --enable-lib-only to ensure that only
libnghttp2 is built. This avoids potential build error related to
building bundled applications.
To build and run the application programs (nghttp, nghttpd,
nghttpx and h2load) in the src directory, the following packages
are required:
To enable -a option (getting linked assets from the downloaded
resource) in nghttp, the following package is required:
To enable systemd support in nghttpx, the following package is required:
The HPACK tools require the following package:
To build sources under the examples directory, libevent is required:
To mitigate heap fragmentation in long running server programs
(nghttpd and nghttpx), jemalloc is recommended:
jemalloc
Note
Alpine Linux currently does not support malloc replacement due to musl limitations. See details in issue #762.
For BoringSSL or aws-lc build, to enable RFC 8879 TLS Certificate Compression in applications, the following library is required:
To enable mruby support for nghttpx, mruby is required. We need to build
mruby with C++ ABI explicitly turned on, and probably need other
mrgems, mruby is managed by git submodule under third-party/mruby
directory. Currently, mruby support for nghttpx is disabled by
default. To enable mruby support, use --with-mruby configure
option. Note that at the time of this writing, libmruby-dev and mruby
packages in Debian/Ubuntu are not usable for nghttp2, since they do
not enable C++ ABI. To build mruby, the following packages are
required:
nghttpx supports neverbleed,
privilege separation engine for OpenSSL. In short, it minimizes the
risk of private key leakage when serious bug like Heartbleed is
exploited. The neverbleed is disabled by default. To enable it, use
--with-neverbleed configure option.
To enable the experimental HTTP/3 support for h2load and nghttpx, the following libraries are required:
Use --enable-http3 configure option to enable HTTP/3 feature for
h2load and nghttpx.
In order to build optional eBPF program to direct an incoming QUIC UDP datagram to a correct socket for nghttpx, the following libraries are required:
Use --with-libbpf configure option to build eBPF program.
libelf-dev is needed to build libbpf.
For Ubuntu 20.04, you can build libbpf from the source code. nghttpx requires eBPF program for reloading its configuration and hot swapping its executable.
Compiling libnghttp2 C source code requires a C99 compiler. gcc 4.8 is known to be adequate. In order to compile the C++ source code, C++20 compliant compiler is required. At least g++ >= 12 and clang++ >= 15 are known to work.
Note
To enable mruby support in nghttpx, and use --with-mruby
configure option.
Note
Mac OS X users may need the --disable-threads configure option to
disable multi-threading in nghttpd, nghttpx and h2load to prevent
them from crashing. A patch is welcome to make multi threading work
on Mac OS X platform.
Note
To compile the associated applications (nghttp, nghttpd, nghttpx
and h2load), you must use the --enable-app configure option and
ensure that the specified requirements above are met. Normally,
configure script checks required dependencies to build these
applications, and enable --enable-app automatically, so you
don't have to use it explicitly. But if you found that
applications were not built, then using --enable-app may find
that cause, such as the missing dependency.
Note
In order to detect third party libraries, pkg-config is used
(however we don't use pkg-config for some libraries (e.g., libev)).
By default, pkg-config searches *.pc file in the standard
locations (e.g., /usr/lib/pkgconfig). If it is necessary to use
*.pc file in the custom location, specify paths to
PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable, and pass it to configure
script, like so:
$ ./configure PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/pkgconfig
For pkg-config managed libraries, *_CFLAG and *_LIBS
environment variables are defined (e.g., OPENSSL_CFLAGS,
OPENSSL_LIBS). Specifying non-empty string to these variables
completely overrides pkg-config. In other words, if they are
specified, pkg-config is not used for detection, and user is
responsible to specify the correct values to these variables. For
complete list of these variables, run ./configure -h.
If you are using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, run the following to install the required packages:
sudo apt-get install g++ clang make binutils autoconf automake
autotools-dev libtool pkg-config
zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev libev-dev
libevent-dev libjansson-dev
libc-ares-dev libjemalloc-dev libsystemd-dev
ruby-dev bison libelf-dev
The nghttp2 project regularly releases tar archives which includes nghttp2 source code, and generated build files. They can be downloaded from Releases page.
Building nghttp2 from git requires autotools development packages. Building from tar archives does not require them, and thus it is much easier. The usual build step is as follows:
$ tar xf nghttp2-X.Y.Z.tar.bz2
$ cd nghttp2-X.Y.Z
$ ./configure
$ make
Building from git is easy, but please be sure that at least autoconf 2.68 is used:
$ git submodule update --init
$ autoreconf -i
$ automake
$ autoconf
$ ./configure
$ make
The easiest way to build native Windows nghttp2 dll is use cmake. The free version of Visual C++ Build Tools works fine.
cmake.cmake --build to build library.Note that the above steps most likely produce nghttp2 library only. No bundled applications are compiled.
Under Mingw environment, you can only compile the library, it's
libnghttp2-X.dll and libnghttp2.a.
If you want to compile the applications(h2load, nghttp,
nghttpx, nghttpd), you need to use the Cygwin environment.
Under Cygwin environment, to compile the applications you need to compile and install the libev first.
Secondly, you need to undefine the macro __STRICT_ANSI__, if you
not, the functions fdopen, fileno and strptime will not
available.
the sample command like this:
$ export CFLAGS="-U__STRICT_ANSI__ -I$libev_PREFIX/include -L$libev_PREFIX/lib"
$ export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
$ ./configure
$ make
If you want to compile the applications under examples/, you need
to remove or rename the event.h from libev's installation, because
it conflicts with libevent's installation.
After installing nghttp2 tool suite with make install one might experience a similar error:
nghttpx: error while loading shared libraries: libnghttp2.so.14: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
This means that the tool is unable to locate the libnghttp2.so shared library.
To update the shared library cache run sudo ldconfig.
Note
Documentation is still incomplete.
To build the documentation, run:
$ make html
The documents will be generated under doc/manual/html/.
The generated documents will not be installed with make install.
The online documentation is available at https://nghttp2.org/documentation/
To build h2load and nghttpx with HTTP/3 feature enabled, run the
configure script with --enable-http3.
For nghttpx to reload configurations and swapping its executable while
gracefully terminating old worker processes, eBPF is required. Run
the configure script with --enable-http3 --with-libbpf to build
eBPF program. The QUIC keying material must be set with
--frontend-quic-secret-file in order to keep the existing
connections alive during reload.
The detailed steps to build HTTP/3 enabled h2load and nghttpx follow.
Build aws-lc:
$ git clone --depth 1 -b v1.39.0 https://github.com/aws/aws-lc
$ cd aws-lc
$ cmake -B build -DDISABLE_GO=ON --install-prefix=$PWD/opt
$ make -j$(nproc) -C build
$ cmake --install build
$ cd ..
Build nghttp3:
$ git clone --depth 1 -b v1.6.0 https://github.com/ngtcp2/nghttp3
$ cd nghttp3
$ git submodule update --init --depth 1
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --prefix=$PWD/build --enable-lib-only
$ make -j$(nproc)
$ make install
$ cd ..
Build ngtcp2:
$ git clone --depth 1 -b v1.9.1 https://github.com/ngtcp2/ngtcp2
$ cd ngtcp2
$ git submodule update --init --depth 1
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --prefix=$PWD/build --enable-lib-only --with-boringssl
BORINGSSL_CFLAGS="-I$PWD/../aws-lc/opt/include"
BORINGSSL_LIBS="-L$PWD/../aws-lc/opt/lib -lssl -lcrypto"
$ make -j$(nproc)
$ make install
$ cd ..
If your Linux distribution does not have libbpf-dev >= 0.7.0, build from source:
$ git clone --depth 1 -b v1.4.6 https://github.com/libbpf/libbpf
$ cd libbpf
$ PREFIX=$PWD/build make -C src install
$ cd ..
Build nghttp2:
$ git clone https://github.com/nghttp2/nghttp2
$ cd nghttp2
$ git submodule update --init
$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure --with-mruby --enable-http3 --with-libbpf
CC=clang-15 CXX=clang++-15
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$PWD/../aws-lc/opt/lib/pkgconfig:$PWD/../nghttp3/build/lib/pkgconfig:$PWD/../ngtcp2/build/lib/pkgconfig:$PWD/../libbpf/build/lib64/pkgconfig"
LDFLAGS="$LDFLAGS -Wl,-rpath,$PWD/../aws-lc/opt/lib -Wl,-rpath,$PWD/../libbpf/build/lib64"
$ make -j$(nproc)
The eBPF program reuseport_kern.o should be found under bpf
directory. Pass --quic-bpf-program-file=bpf/reuseport_kern.o
option to nghttpx to load it. See also HTTP/3 section in nghttpx -
HTTP/2 proxy - HOW-TO.
Unit tests are done by simply running make check.
We have the integration tests for the nghttpx proxy server. The tests are written in the Go programming language and uses its testing framework. We depend on the following libraries:
Go modules will download these dependencies automatically.
To run the tests, run the following command under
integration-tests directory:
$ make it
Inside the tests, we use port 3009 to run the test subject server.
nghttp2 v1.0.0 introduced several backward incompatible changes. In this section, we describe these changes and how to migrate to v1.0.0.
h2 and h2c
Previously we announced h2-14 and h2c-14. v1.0.0 implements
final protocol version, and we changed ALPN ID to h2 and h2c.
The macros NGHTTP2_PROTO_VERSION_ID,
NGHTTP2_PROTO_VERSION_ID_LEN,
NGHTTP2_CLEARTEXT_PROTO_VERSION_ID, and
NGHTTP2_CLEARTEXT_PROTO_VERSION_ID_LEN have been updated to
reflect this change.
Basically, existing applications do not have to do anything, just recompiling is enough for this change.
We use "client connection preface" to mean first 24 bytes of client connection preface. This is technically not correct, since client connection preface is composed of 24 bytes client magic byte string followed by SETTINGS frame. For clarification, we call "client magic" for this 24 bytes byte string and updated API.
NGHTTP2_CLIENT_CONNECTION_PREFACE was replaced with
NGHTTP2_CLIENT_MAGIC.NGHTTP2_CLIENT_CONNECTION_PREFACE_LEN was replaced with
NGHTTP2_CLIENT_MAGIC_LEN.NGHTTP2_BAD_PREFACE was renamed as NGHTTP2_BAD_CLIENT_MAGIC
The already deprecated NGHTTP2_CLIENT_CONNECTION_HEADER and
NGHTTP2_CLIENT_CONNECTION_HEADER_LEN were removed.
If application uses these macros, just replace old ones with new ones. Since v1.0.0, client magic is sent by library (see next subsection), so client application may just remove these macro use.
Previously nghttp2 library did not send client magic, which is first
24 bytes byte string of client connection preface, and client
applications have to send it by themselves. Since v1.0.0, client
magic is sent by library via first call of nghttp2_session_send()
or nghttp2_session_mem_send2().
The client applications which send client magic must remove the relevant code.
Alt-Svc specification is not finalized yet. To make our API stable, we have decided to remove all Alt-Svc related API from nghttp2.
NGHTTP2_EXT_ALTSVC was removed.nghttp2_ext_altsvc was removed.We have already removed the functionality of Alt-Svc in v0.7 series and they have been essentially noop. The application using these macro and struct, remove those lines.
Previously nghttp2_on_invalid_frame_recv_cb_called took the
error_code, defined in nghttp2_error_code, as parameter. But
they are not detailed enough to debug. Therefore, we decided to use
more detailed nghttp2_error values instead.
The application using this callback should update the callback
signature. If it treats error_code as HTTP/2 error code, update
the code so that it is treated as nghttp2_error.
Previously nghttp2 did not process client magic (24 bytes byte
string). To make it deal with it, we had to use
nghttp2_option_set_recv_client_preface(). Since v1.0.0, nghttp2
processes client magic by default and
nghttp2_option_set_recv_client_preface() was removed.
Some application may want to disable this behaviour, so we added
nghttp2_option_set_no_recv_client_magic() to achieve this.
The application using nghttp2_option_set_recv_client_preface()
with nonzero value, just remove it.
The application using nghttp2_option_set_recv_client_preface()
with zero value or not using it must use
nghttp2_option_set_no_recv_client_magic() with nonzero value.
The src directory contains the HTTP/2 client, server and proxy programs.
nghttp is a HTTP/2 client. It can connect to the HTTP/2 server
with prior knowledge, HTTP Upgrade and ALPN TLS extension.
It has verbose output mode for framing information. Here is sample
output from nghttp client:
$ nghttp -nv https://nghttp2.org
[ 0.190] Connected
The negotiated protocol: h2
[ 0.212] recv SETTINGS frame
(niv=2)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE(0x04):65535]
[ 0.212] send SETTINGS frame
(niv=2)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE(0x04):65535]
[ 0.212] send SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[ 0.212] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=201, exclusive=0)
[ 0.212] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=101, exclusive=0)
[ 0.212] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.212] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=7, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.212] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=3, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.212] send HEADERS frame
; END_STREAM | END_HEADERS | PRIORITY
(padlen=0, dep_stream_id=11, weight=16, exclusive=0)
; Open new stream
:method: GET
:path: /
:scheme: https
:authority: nghttp2.org
accept: */*
accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
user-agent: nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.221] recv SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[ 0.221] recv (stream_id=13) :method: GET
[ 0.221] recv (stream_id=13) :scheme: https
[ 0.221] recv (stream_id=13) :path: /stylesheets/screen.css
[ 0.221] recv (stream_id=13) :authority: nghttp2.org
[ 0.221] recv (stream_id=13) accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) user-agent: nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.222] recv PUSH_PROMISE frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0, promised_stream_id=2)
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) :status: 200
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) date: Thu, 21 May 2015 16:38:14 GMT
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) content-type: text/html
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) last-modified: Fri, 15 May 2015 15:38:06 GMT
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) etag: W/"555612de-19f6"
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) link: ; rel=preload; as=stylesheet
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) content-encoding: gzip
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) server: nghttpx nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) via: 1.1 nghttpx
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=13) strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
[ 0.222] recv HEADERS frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0)
; First response header
[ 0.222] recv DATA frame
; END_STREAM
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) :status: 200
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) date: Thu, 21 May 2015 16:38:14 GMT
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) content-type: text/css
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) last-modified: Fri, 15 May 2015 15:38:06 GMT
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) etag: W/"555612de-9845"
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) content-encoding: gzip
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) server: nghttpx nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) via: 1.1 nghttpx
[ 0.222] recv (stream_id=2) strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000
[ 0.222] recv HEADERS frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0)
; First push response header
[ 0.228] recv DATA frame
; END_STREAM
[ 0.228] send GOAWAY frame
(last_stream_id=2, error_code=NO_ERROR(0x00), opaque_data(0)=[])
The HTTP Upgrade is performed like so:
$ nghttp -nvu http://nghttp2.org
[ 0.011] Connected
[ 0.011] HTTP Upgrade request
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: nghttp2.org
Connection: Upgrade, HTTP2-Settings
Upgrade: h2c
HTTP2-Settings: AAMAAABkAAQAAP__
Accept: */*
User-Agent: nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.018] HTTP Upgrade response
HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols
Connection: Upgrade
Upgrade: h2c
[ 0.018] HTTP Upgrade success
[ 0.018] recv SETTINGS frame
(niv=2)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE(0x04):65535]
[ 0.018] send SETTINGS frame
(niv=2)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE(0x04):65535]
[ 0.018] send SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=201, exclusive=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=101, exclusive=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=7, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=3, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[ 0.018] send PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=11, weight=16, exclusive=0)
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) :method: GET
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) :scheme: http
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) :path: /stylesheets/screen.css
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) host: nghttp2.org
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) user-agent: nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.019] recv PUSH_PROMISE frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0, promised_stream_id=2)
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) :status: 200
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) date: Thu, 21 May 2015 16:39:16 GMT
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) content-type: text/html
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) content-length: 6646
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) last-modified: Fri, 15 May 2015 15:38:06 GMT
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) etag: "555612de-19f6"
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) link: ; rel=preload; as=stylesheet
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) accept-ranges: bytes
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) server: nghttpx nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=1) via: 1.1 nghttpx
[ 0.019] recv HEADERS frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0)
; First response header
[ 0.019] recv DATA frame
; END_STREAM
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) :status: 200
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) date: Thu, 21 May 2015 16:39:16 GMT
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) content-type: text/css
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) content-length: 38981
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) last-modified: Fri, 15 May 2015 15:38:06 GMT
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) etag: "555612de-9845"
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) accept-ranges: bytes
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) server: nghttpx nghttp2/1.0.1-DEV
[ 0.019] recv (stream_id=2) via: 1.1 nghttpx
[ 0.019] recv HEADERS frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0)
; First push response header
[ 0.026] recv DATA frame
[ 0.027] recv DATA frame
[ 0.027] send WINDOW_UPDATE frame
(window_size_increment=33343)
[ 0.032] send WINDOW_UPDATE frame
(window_size_increment=33707)
[ 0.032] recv DATA frame
; END_STREAM
[ 0.032] recv SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[ 0.032] send GOAWAY frame
(last_stream_id=2, error_code=NO_ERROR(0x00), opaque_data(0)=[])
Using the -s option, nghttp prints out some timing information for
requests, sorted by completion time:
$ nghttp -nas https://nghttp2.org/
***** Statistics *****
Request timing:
responseEnd: the time when last byte of response was received
relative to connectEnd
requestStart: the time just before first byte of request was sent
relative to connectEnd. If '*' is shown, this was
pushed by server.
process: responseEnd - requestStart
code: HTTP status code
size: number of bytes received as response body without
inflation.
URI: request URI
see http://www.w3.org/TR/resource-timing/#processing-model
sorted by 'complete'
id responseEnd requestStart process code size request path
13 +37.19ms +280us 36.91ms 200 2K /
2 +72.65ms * +36.38ms 36.26ms 200 8K /stylesheets/screen.css
17 +77.43ms +38.67ms 38.75ms 200 3K /javascripts/octopress.js
15 +78.12ms +38.66ms 39.46ms 200 3K /javascripts/modernizr-2.0.js
Using the -r option, nghttp writes more detailed timing data to
the given file in HAR format.
nghttpd is a multi-threaded static web server.
By default, it uses SSL/TLS connection. Use --no-tls option to
disable it.
nghttpd only accepts HTTP/2 connections via ALPN or direct HTTP/2
connections. No HTTP Upgrade is supported.
The -p option allows users to configure server push.
Just like nghttp, it has a verbose output mode for framing
information. Here is sample output from nghttpd:
$ nghttpd --no-tls -v 8080
IPv4: listen 0.0.0.0:8080
IPv6: listen :::8080
[id=1] [ 1.521] send SETTINGS frame
(niv=1)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv SETTINGS frame
(niv=2)
[SETTINGS_MAX_CONCURRENT_STREAMS(0x03):100]
[SETTINGS_INITIAL_WINDOW_SIZE(0x04):65535]
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=201, exclusive=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=101, exclusive=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=0, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=7, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv PRIORITY frame
(dep_stream_id=3, weight=1, exclusive=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) :method: GET
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) :path: /
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) :scheme: http
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) :authority: localhost:8080
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) accept: */*
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) accept-encoding: gzip, deflate
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv (stream_id=13) user-agent: nghttp2/1.0.0-DEV
[id=1] [ 1.521] recv HEADERS frame
; END_STREAM | END_HEADERS | PRIORITY
(padlen=0, dep_stream_id=11, weight=16, exclusive=0)
; Open new stream
[id=1] [ 1.521] send SETTINGS frame
; ACK
(niv=0)
[id=1] [ 1.521] send HEADERS frame
; END_HEADERS
(padlen=0)
; First response header
:status: 200
server: nghttpd nghttp2/1.0.0-DEV
content-length: 10
cache-control: max-age=3600
date: Fri, 15 May 2015 14:49:04 GMT
last-modified: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:40:52 GMT
[id=1] [ 1.522] send DATA frame
; END_STREAM
[id=1] [ 1.522] stream_id=13 closed
[id=1] [ 1.522] recv GOAWAY frame
(last_stream_id=0, error_code=NO_ERROR(0x00), opaque_data(0)=[])
[id=1] [ 1.522] closed
nghttpx is a multi-threaded reverse proxy for HTTP/3, HTTP/2, and
HTTP/1.1, and powers http://nghttp2.org and supports HTTP/2 server
push.
We reworked nghttpx command-line interface, and as a result, there
are several incompatibles from 1.8.0 or earlier. This is necessary to
extend its capability, and secure the further feature enhancements in
the future release. Please read Migration from nghttpx v1.8.0 or
earlier
to know how to migrate from earlier releases.
nghttpx implements important performance-oriented features in TLS, such as
session IDs, session tickets (with automatic key rotation), OCSP
stapling, dynamic record sizing, ALPN, forward secrecy and HTTP/2.
nghttpx also offers the functionality to share session cache and
ticket keys among multiple nghttpx instances via memcached.
nghttpx has 2 operation modes:
| Mode option | Frontend | Backend | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default mode | HTTP/3, HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1 | HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 | Reverse proxy |
--http2-proxy |
HTTP/3, HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1 | HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2 | Forward proxy |
The interesting mode at the moment is the default mode. It works like a reverse proxy and listens for HTTP/3, HTTP/2, and HTTP/1.1 and can be deployed as a SSL/TLS terminator for existing web server.
In all modes, the frontend connections are encrypted by SSL/TLS by
default. To disable encryption, use the no-tls keyword in
--frontend option. If encryption is disabled, incoming HTTP/1.1
connections can be upgraded to HTTP/2 through HTTP Upgrade. On the
other hard, backend connections are not encrypted by default. To
encrypt backend connections, use tls keyword in --backend
option.
nghttpx supports a configuration file. See the --conf option and
sample configuration file nghttpx.conf.sample.
In the default mode, nghttpx works as reverse proxy to the backend
server:
Client <-- (HTTP/3, HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1) --> nghttpx <-- (HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2) --> Web Server
[reverse proxy]
With the --http2-proxy option, it works as forward proxy, and it
is so called secure HTTP/2 proxy:
Client <-- (HTTP/3, HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1) --> nghttpx <-- (HTTP/1.1) --> Proxy
[secure proxy] (e.g., Squid, ATS)
The Client in the above example needs to be configured to use
nghttpx as secure proxy.
At the time of this writing, both Chrome and Firefox support secure HTTP/2 proxy. One way to configure Chrome to use a secure proxy is to create a proxy.pac script like this:
function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
return "HTTPS SERVERADDR:PORT";
}SERVERADDR and PORT is the hostname/address and port of the
machine nghttpx is running on. Please note that Chrome requires a valid
certificate for secure proxy.
Then run Chrome with the following arguments:
$ google-chrome --proxy-pac-url=file:///path/to/proxy.pac --use-npn
The backend HTTP/2 connections can be tunneled through an HTTP proxy.
The proxy is specified using --backend-http-proxy-uri. The
following figure illustrates how nghttpx talks to the outside HTTP/2
proxy through an HTTP proxy:
Client <-- (HTTP/3, HTTP/2, HTTP/1.1) --> nghttpx <-- (HTTP/2) --
--===================---> HTTP/2 Proxy
(HTTP proxy tunnel) (e.g., nghttpx -s)
The h2load program is a benchmarking tool for HTTP/3, HTTP/2, and
HTTP/1.1. The UI of h2load is heavily inspired by weighttp
(https://github.com/lighttpd/weighttp). The typical usage is as
follows:
$ h2load -n100000 -c100 -m100 https://localhost:8443/
starting benchmark...
spawning thread #0: 100 concurrent clients, 100000 total requests
Protocol: TLSv1.2
Cipher: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
Server Temp Key: ECDH P-256 256 bits
progress: 10% done
progress: 20% done
progress: 30% done
progress: 40% done
progress: 50% done
progress: 60% done
progress: 70% done
progress: 80% done
progress: 90% done
progress: 100% done
finished in 771.26ms, 129658 req/s, 4.71MB/s
requests: 100000 total, 100000 started, 100000 done, 100000 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 errored
status codes: 100000 2xx, 0 3xx, 0 4xx, 0 5xx
traffic: 3812300 bytes total, 1009900 bytes headers, 1000000 bytes data
min max mean sd +/- sd
time for request: 25.12ms 124.55ms 51.07ms 15.36ms 84.87%
time for connect: 208.94ms 254.67ms 241.38ms 7.95ms 63.00%
time to 1st byte: 209.11ms 254.80ms 241.51ms 7.94ms 63.00%
The above example issued total 100,000 requests, using 100 concurrent
clients (in other words, 100 HTTP/2 sessions), and a maximum of 100 streams
per client. With the -t option, h2load will use multiple native
threads to avoid saturating a single core on client side.
Warning
Don't use this tool against publicly available servers. That is considered a DOS attack. Please only use it against your private servers.
If the experimental HTTP/3 is enabled, h2load can send requests to
HTTP/3 server. To do this, specify h3 to --alpn-list option
like so:
$ h2load --alpn-list h3 https://127.0.0.1:4433
For nghttp2 v1.58 or earlier, use --npn-list instead of
--alpn-list.
The src directory contains the HPACK tools. The deflatehd program is a
command-line header compression tool. The inflatehd program is a
command-line header decompression tool. Both tools read input from
stdin and write output to stdout. Errors are written to stderr.
They take JSON as input and output. We (mostly) use the same JSON data
format described at https://github.com/http2jp/hpack-test-case.
The deflatehd program reads JSON data or HTTP/1-style header fields from
stdin and outputs compressed header block in JSON.
For the JSON input, the root JSON object must include a cases key.
Its value has to include the sequence of input header set. They share
the same compression context and are processed in the order they
appear. Each item in the sequence is a JSON object and it must
include a headers key. Its value is an array of JSON objects,
which includes exactly one name/value pair.
Example:
{
"cases":
[
{
"headers": [
{ ":method": "GET" },
{ ":path": "/" }
]
},
{
"headers": [
{ ":method": "POST" },
{ ":path": "/" }
]
}
]
}With the -t option, the program can accept more familiar HTTP/1 style
header field blocks. Each header set is delimited by an empty line:
Example:
:method: GET
:scheme: https
:path: /
:method: POST
user-agent: nghttp2
The output is in JSON object. It should include a cases key and its
value is an array of JSON objects, which has at least the following keys:
output_length / input_length * 100Examples:
{
"cases":
[
{
"seq": 0,
"input_length": 66,
"output_length": 20,
"percentage_of_original_size": 30.303030303030305,
"wire": "01881f3468e5891afcbf83868a3d856659c62e3f",
"headers": [
{
":authority": "example.org"
},
{
":method": "GET"
},
{
":path": "/"
},
{
":scheme": "https"
},
{
"user-agent": "nghttp2"
}
],
"header_table_size": 4096
}
,
{
"seq": 1,
"input_length": 74,
"output_length": 10,
"percentage_of_original_size": 13.513513513513514,
"wire": "88448504252dd5918485",
"headers": [
{
":authority": "example.org"
},
{
":method": "POST"
},
{
":path": "/account"
},
{
":scheme": "https"
},
{
"user-agent": "nghttp2"
}
],
"header_table_size": 4096
}
]
}The output can be used as the input for inflatehd and
deflatehd.
With the -d option, the extra header_table key is added and its
associated value includes the state of dynamic header table after the
corresponding header set was processed. The value includes at least
the following keys:
referenced is true, it
is in the reference set. The size includes the overhead (32
bytes). The index corresponds to the index of header table.
The name is the header field name and the value is the
header field value.max_deflate_size.max_size. In this case, the encoder only uses up to first
max_deflate_size buffer. Since the header table size is still
max_size, the encoder has to keep track of entries outside the
max_deflate_size but inside the max_size and make sure
that they are no longer referenced.Example:
{
"cases":
[
{
"seq": 0,
"input_length": 66,
"output_length": 20,
"percentage_of_original_size": 30.303030303030305,
"wire": "01881f3468e5891afcbf83868a3d856659c62e3f",
"headers": [
{
":authority": "example.org"
},
{
":method": "GET"
},
{
":path": "/"
},
{
":scheme": "https"
},
{
"user-agent": "nghttp2"
}
],
"header_table_size": 4096,
"header_table": {
"entries": [
{
"index": 1,
"name": "user-agent",
"value": "nghttp2",
"referenced": true,
"size": 49
},
{
"index": 2,
"name": ":scheme",
"value": "https",
"referenced": true,
"size": 44
},
{
"index": 3,
"name": ":path",
"value": "/",
"referenced": true,
"size": 38
},
{
"index": 4,
"name": ":method",
"value": "GET",
"referenced": true,
"size": 42
},
{
"index": 5,
"name": ":authority",
"value": "example.org",
"referenced": true,
"size": 53
}
],
"size": 226,
"max_size": 4096,
"deflate_size": 226,
"max_deflate_size": 4096
}
}
,
{
"seq": 1,
"input_length": 74,
"output_length": 10,
"percentage_of_original_size": 13.513513513513514,
"wire": "88448504252dd5918485",
"headers": [
{
":authority": "example.org"
},
{
":method": "POST"
},
{
":path": "/account"
},
{
":scheme": "https"
},
{
"user-agent": "nghttp2"
}
],
"header_table_size": 4096,
"header_table": {
"entries": [
{
"index": 1,
"name": ":method",
"value": "POST",
"referenced": true,
"size": 43
},
{
"index": 2,
"name": "user-agent",
"value": "nghttp2",
"referenced": true,
"size": 49
},
{
"index": 3,
"name": ":scheme",
"value": "https",
"referenced": true,
"size": 44
},
{
"index": 4,
"name": ":path",
"value": "/",
"referenced": false,
"size": 38
},
{
"index": 5,
"name": ":method",
"value": "GET",
"referenced": false,
"size": 42
},
{
"index": 6,
"name": ":authority",
"value": "example.org",
"referenced": true,
"size": 53
}
