Dynamic Forward Proxy (DFP)

Docs

Documentation

Dynamically resolve upstream hosts at request time.

The docs in this section use the Envoy-based kgateway proxy. The docs do not work with the agentgateway proxy.

About Dynamic Forward Proxy

Dynamic Forward Proxy (DFP) is a filter in Envoy that allows a gateway proxy to act as a generic HTTP(S) forward proxy without the need to preconfigure all possible upstream hosts. Instead, the DFP dynamically resolves the upstream host at request time by using DNS.

DFPs are especially useful in highly dynamic environments where services come up and down frequently. Such churn makes it hard for a service registry to list all available endpoints at a given time. With DFP, you do not need to have pre-defined destinations. This approach gives you more flexibility to resolve endpoints as the request comes in.

Another common use case for DFPs is to control and monitor all egress traffic. For example, you can apply policies, such as rate limiting, authentication, authorization, and access logging. You can also easily access metrics for the egress traffic that is routed through the forward proxy.

DFPs are configured in a Backend resource and an HTTPRoute that routes traffic to the DFP Backend. If a request reaches the gateway proxy, the proxy extracts the host header value from the request and uses DNS to resolve the host to an IP address. Then, the request is forwarded to the resolved IP address.

Considerations

DFPs offer great flexibility for defining routing patterns for your upstream hosts. However, consider the following downsides when using a DFP:

You cannot configure failover or client-side load balancing policies for DFP-configured routes because no pre-defined upstream hosts exist that determine the desired upstream service.
DNS resolution is done at runtime, which can have performance implications. If Envoy detects a new domain name, Envoy pauses the request and synchronously resolves this domain to get the IP address of the endpoint. Then, Envoy caches the IP address locally.

Before you begin

Follow the Get started guide to install kgateway.
Follow the Sample app guide to create a gateway proxy with an HTTP listener and deploy the httpbin sample app.

Get the external address of the gateway and save it in an environment variable.

export INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS=$(kubectl get svc -n kgateway-system http -o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]['hostname','ip']}")
echo $INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS

kubectl port-forward deployment/http -n kgateway-system 8080:8080

Set up a Dynamic Forward Proxy

Create a Backend for the Dynamic Forward Proxy.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.kgateway.dev/v1alpha1
kind: Backend
metadata:
  name: dfp-backend
  namespace: httpbin
spec:
  type: DynamicForwardProxy
  dynamicForwardProxy: {}
EOF

Create an HTTPRoute that routes incoming traffic to the DFP Backend.

kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: HTTPRoute
metadata:
  namespace: httpbin
  name: dfp-httproute
spec:
  parentRefs:
    - name: http
      namespace: kgateway-system
  rules:
    - backendRefs:
        - name: dfp-backend
          group: gateway.kgateway.dev
          kind: Backend
EOF

Send a request to a hostname of your choice, such as httpbin.org. Verify that your gateway proxy successfully resolves the httpbin.org host and returns its welcome page.

curl -vik http://$INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS:8080 -H "host: httpbin.org"

curl -vik http://localhost:8080 -H "host: httpbin.org"

Example output:

* Request completely sent off
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
...
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
     <meta charset="UTF-8">
     <title>httpbin.org</title>
     <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:400,700|Source+Code+Pro:300,600|Titillium+Web:400,600,700"
         rel="stylesheet">
     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/flasgger_static/swagger-ui.css">
     <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/static/favicon.ico" sizes="64x64 32x32 16x16" />
     <style>
...

Cleanup

You can remove the resources that you created in this guide.

Remove the DFP Backend.

kubectl delete backend dfp-backend -n httpbin

Remove the HTTPRoute.

kubectl delete httproute dfp-httproute -n httpbin

Direct responses External processing (ExtProc)