On the recordRead 8 Oct 202622 facts
Pound
On the record
- ACME
- Pound supports ACME HTTP-01 challenges and can serve challenge files directly.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Dynamic backends
- Optional DNS-based dynamic backends can be built using GNU adns when that library is available.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Extensions
- Lua extensions can implement special backends when Lua support is enabled at build time.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Failover
- It stops sending requests to a backend when it fails and resumes sending them when it recovers.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- HTTPS
- It can decrypt HTTPS requests and pass them to backends as plain HTTP.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- HTTPS and ACME
- It can terminate HTTPS and supports ACME HTTP-01 challenges for certificate issuance.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- Optional build support includes Lua extensions, DNS-based dynamic backends, and Perl-compatible regular expressions through PCRE or PCRE2.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- License
- Pound is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or any later version.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Metrics
- A special backend can generate an OpenMetrics telemetry response.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- No caching
- Pound does not cache requests; it passes each request to a backend.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Notable limits
- Pound does not cache requests, and its documentation says it is not a web accelerator.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- Pound is a reverse proxy, load balancer, and HTTPS front end for web servers.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Request handling
- It forwards browser requests to one or more backend servers and can distribute requests while keeping session information.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Request routing
- It can route requests to backend servers based on criteria such as source IP address, URL, or request headers.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Request validation
- It checks requests for correctness and accepts only well-formed requests.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Routing
- Services can be selected using criteria such as source IP address, URL, or request headers.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Security
- The project describes Pound as a small program that can run setuid/setgid or in a chroot jail and does not access the hard disk except to read certificate files at startup when required.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
- Session persistence
- Session tracking can use client IP, Basic authentication, URL parameters, cookies, HTTP parameters, or header values.github.com · read 8 Oct 2026
