September 2024 Summaries

Ngrok's data platform is managed by a small team, primarily driven by a single data engineer, who shares insights into building and maintaining a data lake while addressing privacy concerns and leveraging open-source tools. The data stored includes customer information from globally distributed Postgres instances, usage metrics, subscription and payment details, and third-party data, with strong access controls ensuring privacy. The data engineering role at ngrok is integrated across the engineering organization, focusing on backend engineering tasks and allowing subject matter experts to handle data modeling. The architecture has evolved from a utilitarian, AWS-heavy setup to a more open-source-oriented platform using tools like Apache Flink, Kafka, Dagster, and dbt for efficient data processing, streaming, and analytics. The team has addressed challenges such as schema management and integration within a Go monorepo, while also developing solutions for fighting abuse by analyzing metadata signals. The article highlights the benefits of their data platform and invites interested engineers to explore or contribute to ngrok's data engineering efforts.

Ngrok offers a streamlined solution for managing secure network ingress by consolidating multiple network components into a single utility, simplifying the deployment and maintenance of network architecture. Traditionally, managing north-south traffic in microservices applications requires a combination of API gateways, load balancers, and NAT gateways, each adding to the architectural complexity and security concerns. Ngrok proposes an alternative by functioning as an ingress controller, API gateway, load balancer, and NAT gateway, all integrated into one service, thereby removing the need for multiple individual components. This approach reduces security risks and operational overhead by centralizing the authentication, authorization, and traffic management functions through the managed ngrok Edge service. With its ease of implementation, ngrok can be effectively paired with service meshes like Linkerd, facilitating seamless integration and traffic management without the need for additional setup. This capability allows developers to focus on application functionality rather than network configuration, enabling applications to securely and efficiently handle traffic as though each service were a standalone application.

AWS provides two main options for secure communication between complex systems: AWS PrivateLink and VPC peering. AWS PrivateLink allows private connections among VPCs, AWS services, and on-premises networks without using the public internet, offering enhanced security, especially for applications with high compliance needs. It is beneficial for accessing specific applications and for hybrid cloud setups but can be costly and has limited connectivity options. VPC peering, by contrast, enables direct links between VPCs, allowing seamless data transfer within the AWS network, supporting various traffic types, and incurring lower costs, but it lacks transitive routing and can become complex at scale. As an alternative, ngrok provides a simplified networking solution by allowing secure connections across networks using a software-defined perimeter and tunnels, combining the benefits of both AWS options while offering additional features like multi-cloud support and a flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model. Ngrok simplifies configurations and reduces operational burdens, making it a compelling choice for users seeking to avoid the complexity and costs associated with AWS PrivateLink and the limitations of VPC peering.

ngrok's Traffic Policy module allows developers to shape HTTP traffic by using request variables, which provide access to details like headers, cookies, trailers, and target URLs. Request variables can be used in CEL expressions or interpolated into actions for custom responses, adding headers, and logging. The new library of request variables includes `req.content_type`, `req.method`, `req.user_agent`, `req.url.uri`, and others, organized under the `req` namespace. These variables enable developers to implement various use cases, such as blocking excessive file uploads, creating "pretty" URLs for better UX and SEO, deploying A/B tests, and providing custom error responses with Problem Details. To get started, sign up for a free ngrok account and explore resources on Traffic Policy and request variables.

Ngrok, known primarily as a tunneling service, offers a wide range of development and production use cases beyond secure tunnels, and to help users explore these possibilities, ngrok has introduced a livestream series called Office Hours. Co-hosted by Joel, a Senior Developer Educator, and Scott McAllister, a Principal Developer Advocate, along with rotating guests from Product and Customer Success, the sessions aim to foster a community where developers can learn about ngrok's capabilities, share insights, and engage in Q&A discussions. Each session includes demos, product updates, and open Q&A, with additional segments like mini-talks and community showcases. Unlike the Developer Roundtable, which delves into production use cases, Office Hours focuses on introductory and intermediate learning experiences. Scheduled for mid-month, these sessions encourage participants to register, submit questions in advance, and engage live, with past sessions available on ngrok's YouTube channel.

Cloud service providers like AWS and GCP offer extensive features but can be costly, prompting some users to consider simpler options like DigitalOcean for early-stage projects. However, as needs grow, particularly for multi-region low-latency API services, challenges arise with DigitalOcean’s native load balancers being limited to VMs within the same data center. Ngrok offers a solution with its Global Server Load Balancer (GSLB), which routes traffic efficiently across multiple DigitalOcean Droplets and points of presence worldwide, providing speed, resilience, and additional features such as JWT validation and rate limiting. Ngrok supports multi-cloud deployments, allowing users to distribute workloads across different cloud providers, and maintains simplicity by not requiring extensive networking knowledge or application modifications. The service is designed to be developer-friendly, automatically handling networking complexities, and comes with support for integrating branded domains and managing TLS certificates.

Ngrok has introduced an updated usage view for user accounts, aiming to enhance transparency and simplicity in monitoring endpoint traffic and data usage. This new feature allows users to easily assess their account's traffic volume, including metrics such as endpoint connections, HTTPS requests, TCP/TLS endpoint connections, data transfer, and user authentication via OAuth, OIDC, or SAML. Users can filter these metrics over various time frames and track them against their plan limits, receiving alerts when they approach or exceed their limits, which helps in taking corrective actions or upgrading their plans. The updated dashboard is designed to make usage data both visible and actionable, and ngrok encourages feedback through their community repository to refine the feature and their usage-based pricing strategy.