* perf(proxy): use mutex-based connection pool
The proxy package (used for example by the forward plugin) utilized
an actor model where a single connManager goroutine managed
connection pooling via unbuffered channels (dial, yield, ret). This
design serialized all connection acquisition and release operations
through a single goroutine, creating a bottleneck under high
concurrency. This was observable as a performance degradation when
using a single upstream backend compared to multiple backends
(which sharded the bottleneck).
Changes:
- Removed dial, yield, and ret channels from the Transport struct.
- Removed the connManager goroutine's request processing loop.
- Implemented Dial() and Yield() using a sync.Mutex to protect the
connection slice, allowing for fast concurrent access without
context switching.
- Downgraded connManager to a simple background cleanup loop that
only handles connection expiration on a ticker.
- Updated plugin/pkg/proxy/connect.go to use direct method calls
instead of channel sends.
- Updated tests to reflect the removal of internal channels.
Benchmarks show that this change eliminates the single-backend
bottleneck. Now a single upstream backend performs on par with
multiple backends, and overall throughput is improved.
The implementation aligns with standard Go patterns for connection
pooling (e.g., net/http.Transport).
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* fix: address PR review for persistent.go
- Named mutex field instead of embedding, to not expose
Lock() and Unlock()
- Move stop check outside of lock in Yield()
- Close() without a separate goroutine
- Change stop channel to struct
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* fix: address code review feedback for conn pool
- Switch from LIFO to FIFO connection selection for source port
diversity, reducing DNS cache poisoning risk (RFC 5452).
- Remove "clear entire cache" optimization as it was LIFO-specific.
FIFO naturally iterates and skips expired connections.
- Remove all goroutines for closing connections; collect connections
while holding lock, close synchronously after releasing lock.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* fix: remove unused error consts
No longer utilised after refactoring the channel based approach.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* feat(forward): add max_idle_conns option
Add configurable connection pool limit for the forward plugin via
the max_idle_conns Corefile option.
Changes:
- Add SetMaxIdleConns to proxy
- Add maxIdleConns field to Forward struct
- Add max_idle_conns parsing in forward plugin setup
- Apply setting to each proxy during configuration
- Update forward plugin README with new option
By default the value is 0 (unbounded). When set, excess
connections returned to the pool are closed immediately
rather than cached.
Also add a yield related test.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* chore(proxy): simple Dial by closing conns inline
Remove toClose slice collection to reduce complexity. Instead close
expired connections directly while iterating. Reduces complexity with
negligible lock-time impact.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* chore: fewer explicit Unlock calls
Cleaner and less chance of forgetting to unlock on new possible
code paths.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
---------
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
Ensure Dial exits early or returns error when Transport has been
stopped, instead of blocking on the dial or ret channels. This removes
a potential goroutine leak where callers could pile up waiting
forever under heavy load.
Add select guards before send and receive, and propagate clear error
values so callers can handle shutdown gracefully.
Signed-off-by: Ville Vesilehto <ville@vesilehto.fi>
* plugin/forward: Move Proxy into pkg/plugin/proxy, to allow forward.Proxy to be used outside of forward plugin.
Signed-off-by: Patrick Downey <patrick.downey@dioadconsulting.com>
