Railgun
Railgun creates a persistent TCP connection between Cloudflare’s edge and the origin, which provides various benefits such as performance improvements and connectivity management. Railgun is configured using two components: the sender and the listener. The sender, automatically configured at every Cloudflare data center, establishes a persistent connection with the listener, installed at the origin server. Each component keeps track of the most recently requested version of a page.
Railgun’s evolution
Since Railgun’s launch, Cloudflare has released several products in different areas that better address the problems that Railgun set out to solve. In the table below, you can find more information about how to reproduce the functionality of Railgun using newer Cloudflare solutions.
| Use case | Railgun solution | Improved Cloudflare solution |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Railgun can transmit the difference between dynamic page requests, but not necessarily over the fastest Internet path. |
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| Connectivity and IP Management | Railgun listeners can front multiple origin servers simultaneously, reducing the need for more IP management.Redundant Railgun listeners can be deployed for increased fault tolerance. |
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| Reduce egress fees to Cloudflare | In some cases, Railgun compression can reduce egress. |
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