- RPC nodes are bridges, APIs, for users to access the Solana cluster.
- The performance of nodes can be enhanced using HAProxy’s scalable solution.
The Solana Network was designed to overcome the shortcomings of Ethereum while providing its unique features. Thus, in 2017, Solana Labs launched Solana Network, which was a decentralised blockchain platform with smart contracts and dApps capabilities. Shortly, the crypto space was aware of the new lion in the jungle who had enormous strength.
The network aims to solve all three aspects of the blockchain trilemma, namely scalability, security, and decentralisation. The platform boasts 710,000 transactions per second (TPS) on a standard network in terms of gigabytes which is mammoth compared to just 15 TPS of Ethereum, its primary rival. It operated on both Proof of
History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS) for its consensus, making the network highly secure.
Apart from the several decentralised validator nodes, the Solana network also supports what it calls the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) nodes. Although both validator nodes and RPC nodes run the same software, they are designed to perform completely different tasks. RPC nodes can be called the bridge connecting the client applications and the Solana cluster and serve as an application programming interface (API) for users.
Owing to the technical expertise required in handling an RPC node, developers generally use them. From an application user’s point of view, a low-performing RPC node is equal to a poor Solana cluster. If the nodes need to brag about Solana’s low latency and high speed, they need to upgrade their RPC infrastructure as well.
What Is HAProxy?
Imagine running a server that often gets a lot of traffic, which causes several issues and you finally discover the need to scale your server. Scaling calls for you to go with the two most general approaches either: load balancing or running on multiple threads. Multithreading is considered, by many, a better option, but, if the CPU core limit is achieved by the server, it becomes limiting. Load balancing can be thought of as simply distributing the whole traffic to many, rather than one, servers and achieving unimaginable scalability.
HAProxy stands for High Availability Proxy and it is available as open-source software. It works as a load balancer and helps with SSL/TLS termination. It simply allocates the high incoming traffic among multiple backend servers and also helps in reverse proxying. With HAProxy, nodes can achieve improved performance, in terms of low latency and high throughput, fault tolerance, and effective use of resources. It is primarily used for HTTPS and TCP-based applications.
RPC nodes running for Solana can effectively use HAProxy to achieve high scalability and provide a smooth user experience for end users. While installing, the nodes have to make sure they follow some defined configurations, which are as follows:
The global and default settings are the foundation and the default parameters are automatically inherited by all the developers, both backend and frontend. Timeouts, which specify the duration for any request to be processed, can be adjusted based on individual use cases. However, it has to be such that it finds a balance between running live requests and deleting unresponsive ones from the node. To maintain the standard level of security and encryption, all requests from HTTP need to be directed to HTTPS.
Conclusion
Although HAProxy comes with an efficient set of default settings, developers should not just settle on them, but rather dive into customizations. This will allow them to explore the software broadly and salt it according to their taste. The performance of the RPC node in turn reflects the Solana cluster and developers should aim to offer the best user experience.