I wrote a load balancer with XDP and Go
Facebook's Katran looked too scary (and I don't do C++), so I thought I would investigate using XDP/eBPF to redirect packets at high speed and Go to do the control plane work of health-checking backed servers and managing configuration. With luck the resulting binary should be easy to deploy by non-developers. It's still not mature, but seems to work. Code was written in a very exploratory manner, and I'm not a developer so it is quite shocking at the moment, but I aim to improve it. It is intended to be horizontally scalable with ECMP and has been tested on service providing…
I wrote a load balancer with XDP and Go launched on March 7, 2022 with 15 votes, #1,079 of 3,153 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 4 years on.
In plain words
This load balancer uses XDP and eBPF for high-speed packet redirection combined with Go for health-checking and configuration management. Built as an alternative to Facebook's Katran, it aims to provide easier deployment for non-developers while supporting horizontal scaling through ECMP. The project is still experimental but has demonstrated handling 40Gb/s traffic with reasonable CPU utilization on single nodes.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
A horizontally scalable Direct Server Return layer 4 load balancer for Linux using XDP/eBPF - davidcoles/vc5
In the maker’s words, at launch
Facebook's Katran looked too scary (and I don't do C++), so I thought I would investigate using XDP/eBPF to redirect packets at high speed and Go to do the control plane work of health-checking backed servers and managing configuration. With luck the resulting binary should be easy to deploy by non-developers.…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
I wrote a new BitTorrent tracker in Elixir2025 · github.com · ▲394Hello everyone! I'm currently in a journey to learn and improve my Elixir and Go skills (my daily job uses C++) and looking through my backlog for projects to take on I decided Elixir is the perfect language to write a highly-parallel BitTorrent tracker. So I have spent my free time these last 3 months writing one! Now I think it has enough features to present it to the world (and a docker image to give it a quick try). I know some people see trackers as relics of the past now that DHT and PEX are common but I think they still serve a purpose in today's Internet (purely talking about public…
Write your BPF programs in Go, not CMay 2026 · github.com · ▲112Write your BPF programs in Go, not C. gobee transpiles a Go subset to BPF C and generates typed cilium/ebpf bindings. - boratanrikulu/gobee
Using eBPF to see through encryption without a proxy2025 · github.com · ▲259Hi HN, I'm Tyler Flint, one of the creators of qtap. For a while now, my team and I at Qpoint.io have been grappling with the challenge of understanding what's actually happening inside the encrypted traffic leaving our production systems. Modern apps rely heavily on third-party APIs (think payment processors, data providers, etc.), but once TLS kicks in, figuring out exactly what data is being sent, identifying PII exposure, or debugging integration issues becomes incredibly difficult without resorting to complex and often brittle solutions. Traditional approaches like forward proxies…
eBPF-powered L4 package dropper2022 · github.com · ▲11eBPF/XDP packet filtering for Linux. Contribute to boratanrikulu/durdur development by creating an account on GitHub.
go-nbd – A Pure Go NBD Server and Client2023 · github.com · ▲113Hey HN! I just released go-nbd, a lightweight Go library for effortlessly creating NBD servers and clients. Its a neat tool for creating custom Linux block devices with arbitrary backends, such as a file, byte slice or what I'm planning to use it for, a tape drive. While there are a few partially abandoned projects like this out there already, this library tries to be as maintainable as possible by only implementing the most recent handshake revision and baseline functionality for both the client and the server, while still having enough support to be useful. I'd love to get your feedback :)
Goroutine Monitor Powered by eBPF2024 · github.com · ▲75An eBPF tool monitoring a goroutine. Contribute to keisku/gmon development by creating an account on GitHub.
More dev tools this month
the category →

open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 28d ago · github.com

Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 26d ago · github.com
OpenBot▲362Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer
Dev tools · 23d ago · openbot.run
Talanoa▲346Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…
Dev tools · 21d ago · talanoa.email
CoreSpeed▲332One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools
Dev tools · 29d ago · corespeed.io
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, March 2022
the whole month →- IM
Hi HN! I made many small web games in the past with Unity or Phaser. But this time I wanted to make something completely on my own. So I coded a basic game framework in plain JavaScript, and used it to make Almost Pong. This was a really fun project that taught me a lot about JavaScript, and I plan to make more minimalist games with this framework. Interesting fact: Almost Pong doesn't load any assets, all sprites and sounds are generated with code. Happy to answer questions, and please let me know if you have any feedback on the game. Thanks!
Dev tools · 2022 · lessmilk.com
- IM
Life & fun · 2022 · networksfromscratch.com
- HA
Paste the following into the console of any HN page - for annotated avatars on all HN comments. (self contained code) for(u of document.querySelectorAll('.hnuser'))for(u.prepend(c=document.createElement('canvas')),x=c.getContext('2d'),c.width=18,c.height=14,s=u.innerText,r=1,i=28+s.length;i--;i>>29>X*X/3+Y/2&&x.fillRect(6+2*X,2*Y,2,2)&x.fillRect(6-2*X,2*Y,2,2):r+=s.charCodeAt(i-28,x.fillStyle='#'+(r>>8&0xFFFFFF).toString(16)))r^=r>>17,r^=r>2
Dev tools · 2022



How well do you know your area? Test your knowledge by locating streets on a map.
Work · 2022 · backofyourhand.com