What is Nylon?

Nylon is a high-performance HTTP/HTTPS reverse proxy built with Rust, powered by Cloudflare's Pingora framework. It's designed to be fast, reliable, and highly extensible through its plugin system.

Why Nylon?

⚡️ Performance First

Built on top of Pingora, the same technology that powers Cloudflare's edge network, Nylon delivers:

• Low latency request handling
• Efficient memory usage
• High throughput
• Connection pooling and reuse

🔌 Plugin Ecosystem

Extend Nylon's functionality with plugins:

• Request/Response filtering
• Authentication and authorization
• Custom logging and metrics
• WebSocket message handling
• Go SDK ready, more languages coming soon

🎯 Enterprise Features

• Multiple Load Balancing Strategies: Round Robin, Weighted, Consistent Hashing, Random
• TLS/HTTPS Support: Automatic certificate management with ACME (Let's Encrypt)
• Advanced Routing: Path-based and host-based routing with parameter extraction
• Dynamic Configuration: Hot-reload configuration without downtime
• Observability: Comprehensive logging with request/response metrics

Use Cases

API Gateway

Use Nylon as a centralized entry point for your microservices:

• Route requests to appropriate services
• Handle authentication and authorization
• Rate limiting and throttling
• Request/response transformation

Load Balancer

Distribute traffic across multiple backend servers:

• Health checks
• Connection pooling
• Automatic failover
• Session persistence

WebSocket Proxy

Proxy WebSocket connections with:

• Message filtering and transformation
• Room-based broadcasting
• Connection management

Architecture

┌─────────────┐
│   Client    │
└──────┬──────┘
       │
       │ HTTP/HTTPS/WebSocket
       │
┌──────▼──────────────────────┐
│        Nylon Proxy          │
│  ┌────────────────────────┐ │
│  │   Plugin System        │ │
│  │  ┌──────────────────┐  │ │
│  │  │ Request Filter   │  │ │
│  │  │ Response Filter  │  │ │
│  │  │ Body Filter      │  │ │
│  │  │ Logging          │  │ │
│  │  └──────────────────┘  │ │
│  └────────────────────────┘ │
│  ┌────────────────────────┐ │
│  │   Routing Engine       │ │
│  └────────────────────────┘ │
│  ┌────────────────────────┐ │
│  │   Load Balancer        │ │
│  └────────────────────────┘ │
└──────┬──────────────────────┘
       │
       │ Multiple strategies
       │
┌──────▼──────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
│  Backend 1  │  │  Backend 2  │  │  Backend 3  │
└─────────────┘  └─────────────┘  └─────────────┘

What Makes Nylon Different?

• 🦀 Built with Rust on Pingora - Leverages Cloudflare's battle-tested framework for unmatched performance and reliability
• 🔌 Flexible Plugin System - FFI-based architecture supporting multiple languages (Go SDK ready, more coming)
• ⚡️ True Zero-Downtime - Hot reload configuration and code without dropping a single connection
• 🔒 Security First - Automatic TLS with ACME, built-in security headers, and safe plugin isolation
• 📊 Observable by Default - Comprehensive logging, metrics, and health checks out of the box
• 🎯 Developer Friendly - Clean YAML config, intuitive APIs, and extensive documentation

Next Steps

Ready to get started?

Check out the Quick Start guide to begin using Nylon.