Customize the default idle timeout of 1 hour (3600s).

About idle timeouts

By default, Envoy terminates the connection to a downstream or upstream service after one hour if there are no active streams. You can customize this idle timeout with an HTTPListenerPolicy. The policy updates the common_http_protocol_options setting in Envoy.

Note that the idle timeout configures the timeout for the entire connection from a downstream service to the gateway proxy, and to the upstream service. If you want to set a timeout for a single stream, configure the idle stream timeout instead.

Before you begin

  1. Follow the Get started guide to install Gloo Gateway.

  2. Follow the Sample app guide to create a gateway proxy with an HTTP listener and deploy the httpbin sample app.

  3. Get the external address of the gateway and save it in an environment variable.

      export INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS=$(kubectl get svc -n gloo-system http -o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]['hostname','ip']}")
echo $INGRESS_GW_ADDRESS  
  
      kubectl port-forward deployment/http -n gloo-system 8080:8080

Set up idle stream timeouts

  1. Create an HTTPListenerPolicy with your idle timeout configuration. In this example, you apply an idle timeout of 30 seconds.

      kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
apiVersion: gateway.kgateway.dev/v1alpha1
kind: HTTPListenerPolicy
metadata:
  name: idle-time
  namespace: gloo-system
spec:
  targetRefs:
  - group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: http
  idleTimeout: "30s"
EOF

  2. Verify that the gateway proxy is configured with the idle timeout.

    1. Port-forward the gateway proxy on port 19000.

        kubectl port-forward deployment/http -n gloo-system 19000

    2. Get the configuration of your gateway proxy as a config dump.

        curl -X POST 127.0.0.1:19000/config_dump\?include_eds > gateway-config.json

    3. Open the config dump and find the http_connection_manager configuration. Verify that the timeout policy is set as you configured it.

      Example jq command:

        jq '.configs[] 
| select(."@type" == "type.googleapis.com/envoy.admin.v3.ListenersConfigDump") 
| .dynamic_listeners[].active_state.listener.filter_chains[].filters[] 
| select(.name == "envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager")' gateway-config.json

      Example output:

        {
  "name": "envoy.filters.network.http_connection_manager",
  "typed_config": {
      "@type": "type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.network.http_connection_manager.v3.HttpConnectionManager",
      "stat_prefix": "http",
      "rds": {
      "config_source": {
          "ads": {},
          "resource_api_version": "V3"
      },
      "route_config_name": "listener~8080"
      },
      "http_filters": [
      {
          "name": "envoy.filters.http.router",
          "typed_config": {
          "@type": "type.googleapis.com/envoy.extensions.filters.http.router.v3.Router"
          }
      }
      ],
      "use_remote_address": true,
      "normalize_path": true,
      "merge_slashes": true,
      "common_http_protocol_options": {
      "idle_timeout": "30s"
      }
  }
}

Cleanup

You can remove the resources that you created in this guide.
  kubectl delete httplistenerpolicy idle-time -n gloo-system