Pangolin’s nodes are an ability to put strategically located servers around the world that serve as entry points for user traffic to your applications. They form the foundation of Pangolin’s distributed architecture, providing high availability and optimal performance.

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What Are Nodes?

Entry Points

Handle incoming user requests before routing them to your applications.

Global Coverage

Located regionally to minimize latency for users in different regions.

High Availability

Multiple locations ensure your applications remain accessible even if individual locations fail.

Authentication

Verify user identity and enforce access policies before allowing access.
Think of different nodes as the “front doors” to your applications - users connect to the closest one, and it securely routes their requests to your backend services.

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How Nodes Work

1

Ingress Routing

Request is routed to the closest available node. If one goes down, there is always another node available.
2

Authentication

User identity is verified at the node before getting routed to your backend.
3

Tunnel Selection

Pangolin selects the optimal tunnel route to your backend service. Site tunnel clients (Newt) connect to the optimal node.
4

Failover Handling

If the primary tunnel fails, traffic automatically switches to an alternative route.

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Advantages of Nodes

Low Latency

Users connect to the geographically closest node.

Optimized Routing

Automatic selection of the best available tunnel to route to your backend services.

Edge Computing

Provide ingress to thin-clients on private networks via tunnels.

Health Monitoring

Each node continuously monitors its health and connectivity to your backend.

Regional Redundancy

Multiple nodes ensure your applications remain accessible during regional outages.

Fault Tolerance

No single point of failure - if one location goes down, there is always a way back to your application.

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Deployment Models

Pangolin Cloud

Network of nodes with automatic failover and routing to your backend services.

Managed

Host your own multiple nodes with cloud coordination and automatic failover. Data always transits your servers.

Self-Hosted

Fully self-hosted, self-contained Pangolin server acting as a single node.
Self-hosted Pangolin provides only a single node and is not highly available. Consider Pangolin Cloud or managed deployment for production environments requiring high availability.
Managed deployment is ideal for organizations that need high availability while maintaining control over their infrastructure and data transit.