netstack.fm Pingora with Edward and Noah from Cloudflare
Nov 25, 2025
Edward Wang, a Cloudflare engineer specializing in the Rust-based Pingora proxy framework, joins the discussion alongside Noah. They dive into why Cloudflare transitioned from NGINX to Pingora, emphasizing its modular design and enhanced caching capabilities. Key topics include dynamic traffic handling, connection reuse strategies, and the power of gRPC support. Edward and Noah also explore performance optimizations, TLS backend configurations, and the benefits of using Tokio runtimes in modern networking. Their insights reveal the intricacies of developing high-performance proxies.
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Two Proxies, Two Philosophies
- Oxy and Pingora evolved from different product needs: tunneled/forward proxying vs origin-facing reverse proxying.
- Oxy became opinionated and generic-heavy; Pingora aimed for a leaner, modular handler model.
Pingora Is A Purpose-Built Reverse Proxy
- Pingora was built as a purpose-driven reverse proxy focused on origin connection reuse and caching.
- The team designed a minimal engine that lets users inject custom filters rather than a batteries-included giant framework.
NGINX Fork Pain Sparked Pingora
- Edward described painful maintenance of a heavily patched NGINX fork that inspired Pingora.
- The team wanted a cleaner, modular system instead of wrestling with upstream NGINX changes.