IPFS & Reverse HTTP Proxies

When run in production environments, go-ipfs should generally be run behind a reverse HTTP proxy (usually NGINX). You may need a reverse proxy to:

• Load balance requests across multiple go-ipfs daemons.
• Cache responses.
• Buffer requests, only releasing them to go-ipfs when complete. This can help protect go-ipfs from the [slowloris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowloris_(computer_security) attack.
• Block content.
• Rate limit and timeout requests.
• Apply QoS rules (e.g., prioritize traffic for certain important IPFS resources).

This document contains a collection of tips, tricks, and pitfalls when running a go-ipfs node behind a reverse HTTP proxy.

WARNING: Due to nginx#1293/go-ipfs#6402, parts of the go-ipfs API will not work correctly behind an NGINX reverse proxy as go-ipfs starts sending back a response before it finishes reading the request body. The gateway itself is unaffected.

Peering

Go-ipfs gateways behind a single load balancing reverse proxy should use the peering subsystem to peer with each other. That way, as long as one go-ipfs daemon has the content being requested, the others will be able to serve it.

Garbage Collection

Gateways rarely store content permanently. However, running garbage collection can slow down a go-ipfs node significantly. If you've noticed this issue in production, consider "garbage collecting" by resetting the go-ipfs repo whenever you run out of space, instead of garbage collecting.

1. Initialize your gateways repo to some known-good state (possibly pre-seeding it with some content, a config, etc.).
2. When you start running low on space, for each load-balanced go-ipfs node:
   1. Use the nginx API to set one of the upstream go-ipfs node's to "down".
   2. Wait a minute to let go-ipfs finish processing any in-progress requests (or the short-lived ones, at least).
   3. Take the go-ipfs node down.
   4. Rollback the go-ipfs repo to the seed state.
   5. Restart the go-ipfs daemon.
   6. Update the nginx config, removing the "down" status from the node.

This will effectively "garbage collect" without actually running the garbage collector.

Content Blocking

TODO:

• Filtering requests
• Checking the X-IPFS-Path header in responses to filter again after resolving.

Subdomain Gateway

TODO: Reverse proxies and the subdomain gateway.

Load balancing

TODO: discuss load balancing based on the CID versus the source IP.