TChannel

Network multiplexing and framing protocol for RPC

• Read the Docs
• Languages: Node.js, Python, Go, Java
• Questions: Open a Github issue
• Uber's OSS website

Overview

TChannel is a networking framing protocol used for general RPC, supporting out-of-order responses at extremely high performance where intermediaries can make a forwarding decision quickly. It is easy to implement in multiple languages, especially JavaScript and Python.

Design Goals

• Easy implementation in multiple languages
• High performance forwarding path where intermediaries can make forwarding decisions quickly
• Request/response model with out-of-order responses so that slow requests don't block subsequent faster requests at the head of the line
• Ability of large requests/responses to be broken into fragments and sent progressively
• Optional checksums
• Ability to transport multiple protocols between endpoints (e.g., HTTP+JSON and Thrift)

Components

• tchannel-protocol TChannel Protocol Documentation
• tchannel-node TChannel peer library for Node.js
• tchannel-python TChannel peer library for Python
• tchannel-go TChannel peer library for Go
• tchannel-java TChannel peer library for the JVM
• tcurl TChannel curl program, for making manual one-off requests to TChannel servers
• tcap TChannel packet capture tool, for eavesdropping and inspecting TChannel traffic

MIT Licensed