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2025-02-10Provide better control over which HTTP protocols are enabledLoïc Hoguin
Over cleartext TCP the `protocols` option lists the enabled protocols. The default is to allow both HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Over TLS the default protocol to use when ALPN is not used can now be configured via the `alpn_default_protocol` option. Performing an HTTP/1.1 upgrade to HTTP/2 over TLS is now rejected with an error as connecting to HTTP/2 over TLS requires the use of ALPN (or that HTTP/2 be the default when connecting over TLS).
2025-02-07Deprecate the inactivity_timeout optionsLoïc Hoguin
When idle_timeout is configured we do not need a separate timer to detect inactivity. Disabling idle_timeout is not recommended and should not be necessary.
2025-02-07Add hibernate option to cowboy_http and cowboy_http2Loïc Hoguin
When enabled the connection process will automatically hibernate. Because hibernation triggers GC, this can be used as a way to keep memory usage lower, at the cost of performance.
2025-02-05Lower the lower dynamic buffer value to 1024Loïc Hoguin
There's not a big performance difference between 8192 and 1024 so let's use less memory at the start of the connection.
2025-02-05Implement dynamic socket buffer sizesLoïc Hoguin
Cowboy will set the socket's buffer size dynamically to better fit the current workload. When the incoming data is small, a low buffer size reduces the memory footprint and improves responsiveness and therefore performance. When the incoming data is large, such as large HTTP request bodies, a larger buffer size helps us avoid doing too many binary appends and related allocations. Setting a large buffer size for all use cases is sub-optimal because allocating more than needed necessarily results in a performance hit (not just increased memory usage). By default Cowboy starts with a buffer size of 8192 bytes. It then doubles or halves the buffer size depending on the size of the data it receives from the socket. It stops decreasing at 8192 and increasing at 131072 by default. To keep track of the size of the incoming data Cowboy maintains a moving average. It allows Cowboy to avoid changing the buffer too often but still react quickly when necessary. Cowboy will increase the buffer size when the moving average is above 90% of the current buffer size, and decrease when the moving average is below 40% of the current buffer size. The current buffer size and moving average are propagated when switching protocols. The dynamic buffer is implemented in HTTP/1, HTTP/2 and HTTP/1 Websocket. HTTP/2 Websocket has it disabled because it doesn't interact directly with the socket; in that case it is HTTP/2 that has a dynamic buffer. The dynamic buffer provides a very large performance improvement in many scenarios, at minimal cost for others. Because it largely depend on the underlying protocol the improvements are no all equal. TLS and compression also impact the results. The improvement when reading a large request body, with the requests repeated in a fast loop are: * HTTP: 6x to 20x faster * HTTPS: 2x to 6x faster * H2: 4x to 5x faster * H2C: 20x to 40x faster I am not sure why H2C's performance was so bad, especially compared to H2, when using default buffer sizes. Dynamic buffers make H2C a lot more viable with default settings. The performance impact on "hello world" type requests is minimal, it goes from -5% to +5% roughly. Websocket improvements vary again depending on the protocol, but also depending on whether compression is enabled: * HTTP echo: roughly 2x faster * HTTP send: roughly 4x faster * H2C echo: roughly 2x faster * H2C send: 3x to 4x faster In the echo test we reply back, and Gun doesn't have the dynamic buffer optimisation, so that probably explains the x2 difference. With compression however there isn't much improvement. The results are roughly within -10% to +10% of each other. Zlib compression seems to be a bottleneck, or at least to modify the performance profile to such an extent that the size of the buffer does not matter. This happens to randomly generated binary data as well so it is probably not caused by the test data.
2024-03-14Add max_fragmented_header_block_size HTTP/2 optionLoïc Hoguin
2024-01-23Cowboy 2.11Loïc Hoguin
2024-01-23Document reset_idle_timeout_on_send optionLoïc Hoguin
2024-01-16Recommend increasing max_frame_size_received HTTP/2 optionLoïc Hoguin
2023-12-06Add 'max_cancel_stream_rate' config for the rapid reset attackViktor Söderqvist
Co-authored-by: Björn Svensson <[email protected]>
2021-05-12Cowboy 2.9.02.9.0Loïc Hoguin
2020-11-27Graceful shutdownViktor Söderqvist
Note: This commit makes cowboy depend on cowlib master. Graceful shutdown for HTTP/2: 1. A GOAWAY frame with the last stream id set to 2^31-1 is sent and a timer is started (goaway_initial_timeout, default 1000ms), to wait for any in-flight requests sent by the client, and the status is set to 'closing_initiated'. If the client responds with GOAWAY and closes the connection, we're done. 2. A second GOAWAY frame is sent with the actual last stream id and the status is set to 'closing'. If no streams exist, the connection terminates. Otherwise a second timer (goaway_complete_timeout, default 3000ms) is started, to wait for the streams to complete. New streams are not accepted when status is 'closing'. 3. If all streams haven't completed after the second timeout, the connection is forcefully terminated. Graceful shutdown for HTTP/1.x: 1. If a request is currently being handled, it is waited for and the response is sent back to the client with the header "Connection: close". Then, the connection is closed. 2. If the current request handler is not finished within the time configured in transport option 'shutdown' (default 5000ms), the connection process is killed by its supervisor (ranch). Implemented for HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 in the following scenarios: * When receiving exit signal 'shutdown' from the supervisor (e.g. when cowboy:stop_listener/3 is called). * When a connection process is requested to terminate using sys:terminate/2,3. LH: Edited tests a bit and added todos for useful tests to add.
2020-04-08Document the HTTP/2 linger_timeout optionLoïc Hoguin
2020-03-29Increase the default max_received_frame_rateLoïc Hoguin
Allow 10000 frames every 10 seconds instead of just 1000, as the limit was too quickly reached in some deployments.
2020-01-06Use active,NLoïc Hoguin
This reduces the number of times we need to ask for more packets, and as a result we get a fairly large boost in performance, especially with HTTP/1.1. Unfortunately this makes Cowboy require at least Erlang/OTP 21.3+ because the ssl application did not have active,N. For simplicity the version required will be Erlang/OTP 22+. In addition this change improves hibernate handling in cowboy_websocket. Hibernate will now work for HTTP/2 transport as well, and stray or unrelated messages will no longer cancel hibernate (the process will handle the message and go back into hibernation). Thanks go to Stressgrid for benchmarking an early version of this commit: https://stressgrid.com/blog/cowboy_performance_part_2/
2019-10-07Document the logger optionLoïc Hoguin
2019-10-02Fix HTTP/2 CVEsLoïc Hoguin
A number of HTTP/2 CVEs were documented recently: https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/605641/ This commit, along with a few changes and additions in Cowlib, fix or improve protection against all of them. For CVE-2019-9511, also known as Data Dribble, the new option stream_window_data_threshold can be used to control how little the DATA frames that Cowboy sends can get. For CVE-2019-9516, also known as 0-Length Headers Leak, Cowboy will now simply reject streams containing 0-length header names. For CVE-2019-9517, also known as Internal Data Buffering, the backpressure changes were already pretty good at preventing this issue, but a new option max_connection_buffer_size was added for even better control over how much memory we are willing to allocate. For CVE-2019-9512, also known as Ping Flood; CVE-2019-9515, also known as Settings Flood; CVE-2019-9518, also known as Empty Frame Flooding; and similar undocumented scenarios, a frame rate limiting mechanism was added. By default Cowboy will now allow 1000 frames every 10 seconds. This can be configured via max_received_frame_rate. For CVE-2019-9514, also known as Reset Flood, another rate limiting mechanism was added and can be configured via max_reset_stream_rate. By default Cowboy will do up to 10 stream resets every 10 seconds. Finally, nothing was done for CVE-2019-9513, also known as Resource Loop, because Cowboy does not currently implement the HTTP/2 priority mechanism (in parts because these issues were well known from the start). Tests were added for all cases except Internal Data Buffering, which I'm not sure how to test, and Resource Loop, which is not currently relevant.
2019-09-14Implement backpressure on cowboy_req:stream_bodyLoïc Hoguin
This should limit the amount of memory that Cowboy is using when a handler is sending data much faster than the network. The new max_stream_buffer_size is a soft limit and only has an effect when the cowboy_stream_h handler is used.
2019-09-06Document unit for options that are in bytesLoïc Hoguin
2019-09-05Fix and optimize sending of WINDOW_UPDATE framesLoïc Hoguin
For long-running connections it was possible for the connection window to become larger than allowed by the protocol because the window increases claimed by stream handlers were never reclaimed even if no data was consumed. The new code applies heuristics to fix this and reduce the number of WINDOW_UPDATE frames that are sent. It includes six new options to control that behavior: margin, max and threshold for both the connection and stream windows. The margin is some extra space added on top of the requested read size. The max is the maximum window size at any given time. The threshold is a minimum window size that must be reached before we even consider sending more WINDOW_UPDATE frames. We also avoid sending WINDOW_UPDATE frames when there is already enough space in the window, or when the read size is 0. Cowlib is set to master until a new tag is done.
2018-11-18Document cowboy_stream_h/cowboy_compress_hLoïc Hoguin
2018-11-16Add the idle_timeout option to HTTP/2Loïc Hoguin
2018-11-14Add some missing items to a few module changelogsLoïc Hoguin
2018-11-14Document the proxy_header protocol optionLoïc Hoguin
2018-11-03Add an option to disable sendfile for a listenerLoïc Hoguin
2018-05-02Fix cowboy_http2 manual page formattingLoïc Hoguin
[ci skip]
2018-04-28Add SETTINGS ack timeout and option settings_timeoutLoïc Hoguin
2018-04-27Add options controlling maximum h2 frame sizesLoïc Hoguin
2018-04-26Add options controlling initial control flow windowsLoïc Hoguin
2018-04-25Add the max_concurrent_streams h2 optionLoïc Hoguin
2018-04-25Add options to control h2's SETTINGS_HEADER_TABLE_SIZELoïc Hoguin
2018-04-04Add initial implementation of Websocket over HTTP/2Loïc Hoguin
Using the current draft: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-h2-websockets-01
2017-06-07Remove NumAcceptors argument from start_clear/tlsLoïc Hoguin
They are now cowboy:start_clear/3 and cowboy:start_tls/3. The NumAcceptors argument can be specified via the num_acceptor transport option. Ranch has been updated to 1.4.0 to that effect.
2017-05-05Add inactivity_timeout and other options improvementsLoïc Hoguin
2016-12-22Update cowboy_websocket_manualLoïc Hoguin
2016-12-22Add the manual for cowboy_http2Loïc Hoguin