geo302 — HTTP redirect proxy with healthcheck

geo302 is not an actual proxy, but a "pathfinder", which responses with 302 Found redirecting the HTTP-client to the actual URL. It can use geolite2 geoIP or ripe-geo databases to determine cleint's location and select the most suitable upstream for this location. Client's IP is determined using proxy headers like X-FORWARDED-FOR with a fallback to the socket IP address. geo302 performs active health checks against all upstreams pinging them every few seconds.

The main use case of geo302 is redirecting a user to the closest server to minimize download time of large files.

Quick start

• Edit configuration file geo302.toml
• cargo run --release -- ./geo302.toml

Geo-IP databases

geo302 supports two databases: proprietary Maxmind DB and ripe-geo based on RIPE, GEONAMES and IPDENY. A fork of the ripe-geo database is available as a git submodule of this repository, the binary may be built with this database embedded into the executable. geo302 also supports automatically updates to the most recent version of this database.

Database support can be turned on or off by compile-time features (flags).

Compile-time features

geo302 build can be configured to have more functionality in the cost of the executable size and larger dependency graph. All features are additive and could activate other features.

For example the following command will compile ./target/release/geo302 with a support of Maxmind DB only:

cargo build --release --no-default-features --features=maxminddb

Configuration

See examples of the configuration in config-examples directory.

Here we present a configuration for the default compile-time feature set, optional entries have the default values:

host = "127.0.0.1:8080" # address to listen
ip_headers = ["x-forwarded-for"] # optional headers to get client's IP, the first available is used
ip_header_recursive = true # each haeder could have multiple IPs. true: get the first ip in the header, false: get the last one
log_level = "info" # logging level
response_headers = { <header>: "<VALUE>" } # a pairs of header key-values to add to the server reply
threads = 2 # number of threads to use, requires compile-time support. Special value "cores" means number of available CPU cores

# Health-check settings
[healthcheck]
interval = 5 # sleep time between check requests in seconds
timeout = 3 # request timeout in seconds

# Geo-IP database configuration
[geoip]
type = "<TYPE>" # type of database to use, "maxminddb" and "ripe-geo" are supported

# Options for type = "maxminddb"
path = "<PATH>" # .mmdb geolite2 file, get it from https://dev.maxmind.com

# Options for type = "ripe-geo"
# The database can be loaded from directory (if path option specified), from embedded (compile-time
# feature=ripe-gep-embedded required) or downloaded (if autoupdate option is not false) version automatically
path = "<PATH>" # "continents" folder of ripe-geo database, get it from https://github.com/cbuijs/ripe-geo
overlaps = "skip" # ripe-geo database has overlaping IP ranges, the default is to ignore it with "skip" value
autoupdate = false # Whether to automatically download and update the database
# autoupdate = true # is equivalent to:
# [geoip.autoupdate]
# url = "https://github.com/hombit/ripe-geo-history/archive/refs/heads/continents.tar.gz" # only .tar.gz is supported
# interval = 86400 # update cadence in seconds


# List of mirrors, both upstream and healthcheck keys are required
# If requested URL is <host>/<path>, then redirect URL is <UPSTREAM_URL>/<path>
[mirrors]
some_mirror = { upstream = "<UPSTREAM_URL>", healthcheck = "<HEALTHCHECK_URL>" }
another_mirror = { upstream = "<UPSTREAM2_URL>", healthcheck = "<HEALTHCHECK2_URL>" }


# List of locations
# - some subset of continents
# - the mandatory "default" entry for the cases of unknown/unspecified client location
# For each location the first healthy mirror is used
[continents]
# Africa =
# Asia =
# Europe =
# NorthAmerica =
# Oceania =
# SouthAmerica =
# Antarctica =
default = ["<some_mirror>", "<another_mirror>"]

Limitations

geo302 is a failover and not a load-balancer. Currently geo302 doesn't support an upstream rotation for a single location, but you can specify a list of upstreams: the first available location will be used. If you need a load balancing to optimize a network usage, but do not need geoIP support, consider using another redirect proxy like rlb.

Locations are continent-level only. See https://github.com/hombit/geo302/issues/3 for country-level support

Only GET is supported. See https://github.com/hombit/geo302/issues/4 for HEAD support for health checks

All these limitations are not a part of the design and can be fixed in the future version. Feel free to open an issue or a PR.

License

MIT licensed.