Universal Gateway
What is the Universal Gateway?
ngrok's Universal Gateway is a flexible and composable platform for building API and device gateways, identity-aware proxies, and site-to-site connectivity.
What makes it "universal"? The Universal Gateway can be used with software running locally or in the cloud, and with devices running on-premises or distributed in the field. You can deliver traffic to internal and public APIs as well as orchestrate traffic across your devices. It's globally distributed by default and provides support for multiple environments with minimal configuration.
Features
Here are some of the key features of the Universal Gateway platform:
- : filter, match, manage, and orchestrate traffic to your endpoints.
- Traffic observability: capture request and response data; replay requests against your endpoints for debugging replication.
- Identity and access management: manage credentials for human users and automated processes.
- Kubernetes support: ngrok's Kubernetes Operator supports ingress resources as well as cross-platform configuration resources.
Use cases
Here are some of the most common use cases for the Universal Gateway, from the examples collection:
- The front door pattern: Set up a single public endpoint to serve as the centralized entrance to all upstream services.
- Route to endpoints by geography: Forward requests based on IP geolocation data for improved latency or country-specific features.
- Create identity-based rate limits: Pre-tier requests based on your packaging or pricing model.
- Secure a public Minecraft server: Restrict server access to a specific set of IP addresses.
- Intercept and rewrite headers: Intercept 302 redirect headers to preserve UX and agent behavior.
What's next?
- Check out the Universal Gateway examples collection to see how to implement even more common use cases.
- Explore key concepts for working with the Universal Gateway such as endpoint types, protocols, bindings, and pooling.
- Proceed to the Guides section to get started with ngrok as an API gateway, device gateway, identity-aware proxy, or for site-to-site connectivity.