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MarchProxy Documentation

MarchProxy is a high-performance, enterprise-grade egress proxy solution designed for data center environments. It provides intelligent traffic routing, advanced authentication, and optional hardware acceleration for maximum throughput.

Product Tiers

Community Edition (Open Source)

  • ✅ Up to 3 proxy servers
  • ✅ Single default cluster
  • ✅ Basic authentication (Base64 tokens)
  • ✅ Core protocol support (TCP/UDP/ICMP/HTTP/HTTPS)
  • ✅ eBPF acceleration
  • ✅ PostgreSQL database
  • ✅ Web management interface

Enterprise Edition (Licensed)

  • ✅ Unlimited proxy servers (license-based)
  • ✅ Multi-cluster support with isolation
  • ✅ Advanced authentication (SAML/SCIM/OAuth2/2FA)
  • ✅ JWT token authentication with rotation
  • ✅ XDP rate limiting and advanced features
  • ✅ TLS proxy with certificate management
  • ✅ Hardware acceleration (XDP/AF_XDP/SR-IOV)
  • ✅ Advanced monitoring and alerting
  • ✅ WebSocket and HTTP3/QUIC support
  • ✅ Role-based access control
  • ✅ Enterprise support

Architecture Overview

MarchProxy consists of two main components:

Manager (Python/py4web)

  • Web-based management interface
  • Configuration and policy management
  • User authentication and authorization
  • License validation and cluster management
  • RESTful API for automation
  • PostgreSQL database with pydal ORM

Proxy (Go/eBPF)

  • High-performance packet processing
  • Multi-tier acceleration (Hardware → eBPF → Go → Standard)
  • Protocol support: TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP/HTTPS, WebSocket, HTTP3/QUIC
  • Real-time metrics and health monitoring
  • Horizontal scaling with stateless design

Performance Tiers

MarchProxy implements a multi-tier performance architecture:

  1. Hardware Acceleration (Enterprise)
  2. XDP for driver-level processing (~25 Gbps)
  3. AF_XDP for zero-copy operations (~15 Gbps)

  4. SR-IOV for virtualized environments (~10 Gbps)

  5. eBPF Fast-path

  6. Kernel-level packet filtering (~5 Gbps)
  7. Simple rule matching and statistics

  8. Automatic fast/slow path classification

  9. Go Application Logic

  10. Complex authentication and routing (~1 Gbps)
  11. TLS termination and WebSocket handling

  12. Full protocol feature support

  13. Standard Networking

  14. Traditional kernel socket processing (~100 Mbps)
  15. Fallback for unsupported scenarios

Key Features

Traffic Management

  • Service-to-service mapping with cluster isolation
  • Port configuration: single, ranges, comma-separated lists
  • Protocol support with automatic detection
  • Load balancing and failover

Security & Authentication

  • Multi-factor authentication (Enterprise)
  • SAML/SCIM/OAuth2 integration (Enterprise)
  • Base64 tokens or JWT with rotation
  • Role-based access control
  • TLS certificate management

Monitoring & Observability

  • Prometheus metrics with custom dashboards
  • Structured logging with aggregation
  • Health check endpoints (/healthz, /metrics)
  • UDP syslog integration
  • Real-time performance monitoring

Clustering & Scaling

  • Multi-cluster support (Enterprise)
  • Horizontal proxy scaling
  • Cluster-specific API keys
  • License-based capacity management

System Requirements

Minimum Requirements

  • Linux kernel 4.18+ (for eBPF support)
  • 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM
  • 20GB storage space
  • Docker and Docker Compose
  • Linux kernel 5.4+ (for advanced eBPF features)
  • 8+ CPU cores, 16GB+ RAM
  • SSD storage, 100GB+
  • Dedicated network interfaces
  • Hardware acceleration support (Enterprise)

Network Requirements

  • Outbound internet connectivity for licensing
  • Administrative access to network configuration
  • Support for custom routing tables

Quick Start

  1. Clone the repository: 

    git clone https://github.com/penguintechinc/marchproxy.git
cd marchproxy

  2. Set up environment: 

    cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your configuration

  3. Start services: 

    docker-compose up -d

  4. Access web interface:

  5. Manager: http://localhost:8000
  6. Grafana: http://localhost:3000

  7. Prometheus: http://localhost:9090

  8. Configure your first service:

  9. Log into the manager interface
  10. Create a new cluster (Enterprise) or use default
  11. Add service mappings
  12. Deploy proxy configuration

Support & Community

License

  • Community Edition: Apache 2.0 License
  • Enterprise Edition: Commercial license required

For detailed information on any topic, please refer to the specific documentation sections in the navigation menu.