Technical Specs

NGINX Plus is available only as a binary; it is not distributed as source code. For additional platforms and modules, contact us.

Supported Distributions

Dynamic Modules

Dynamic modules are supported on the same distributions as NGINX Plus, unless noted otherwise in the table below.

Supported SSL/TLS versions

NGINX Plus supports the following SSL/TLS protocols:

• SSLv2
• SSLv3
• TLSv1
• TLSv1.1
• TLSv1.2
• TLSv1.3

You can configure which protocols to enable or disable with the ssl_protocols directive.

TLSv1.2 and earlier are supported on all operating systems listed in Supported Distributions.

TLSv1.3 is supported starting in NGINX Plus R17 and is enabled by default in NGINX Plus R29 and later. It requires OpenSSL 1.1.1 or higher. Note that not all operating systems supported by NGINX Plus include OpenSSL 1.1.1. Check your operating system’s documentation to confirm TLSv1.3 compatibility.

Supported Deployment Environments

• Bare metal
• Container
• Public cloud: AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure
• Virtual machine

Recommended Hardware

See Sizing Guide for Deploying NGINX Plus on Bare Metal Servers

Modules in the NGINX Plus Package

Core

• Core – Control basic functioning (mutexes, events, thread pools, workers, and so on)

Clustering

• Zone Sync – Synchronize shared memory zones among nodes in a cluster

HTTP Core

• HTTP Core – Process HTTP traffic
• Addition – Prepend and append data to a response
• Auto Index – Generate directory listings
• Charset – Add character set in Content-Type field of HTTP response header, and define or convert between character sets
• Empty GIF – Generate empty image response
• Gunzip – Decompress responses for clients that don’t support compression
• Gzip – Use GZIP to compress HTTP responses
• Gzip Static – Serve pre-compressed files from disk
• Headers – Add fields to HTTP response headers, including Cache-Control and Expires
• Index – Specify index files used in directory requests
• Internal Redirect – Allow internal redirects after checking request or connection processing limits, and access limits
• Random Index – Select random index file for directory request
• Real IP – Determine true origin IP address for proxied traffic
• SSI – Process Server Side Includes (SSI) commands
• User ID – Set cookies that uniquely identify clients
• WebDAV – Implement WebDAV file management

HTTP Access Control and Authentication

• Access – Control access based on client IP address (support access control lists [ACLs])
• Auth Basic – Implement HTTP Basic Authentication scheme
• Auth JWT – Validate JSON Web Tokens
• Auth Request – Determine client authorization using subrequests to external authentication server
• Referer – Control access based on Referer field in HTTP request header
• Secure Link – Process encrypted, time-limited links to content

HTTP Advanced Configuration

• Browser – Create variables based on User-Agent field in HTTP request header
• Cache Slice – Create byte-range segments of large files, for more efficient caching
• Geo – Create variables based on client IP address
• Map – Create variables based on other variables in requests
• Rewrite – Test and change URI of request
• Split Clients – Partition clients for A/B testing
• Sub – Replace text string in response (rewrite content)

HTTP Logging

• Log – Log HTTP transactions locally or to syslog
• Session Log – Log HTTP transactions aggregated per session

HTTP Media Delivery

• F4F – Stream HDS (Adobe HTTP Dynamic Streaming; filename extensions .f4f, .f4m, .f4x)
• FLV – Stream FLV (Flash Video; filename extension .flv)
• HLS – Stream HLS (Apple HTTP Live Streaming; filename extensions .m3u8, .ts) dynamically generated from MP4 or MOV (filename extensions .m4a, .m4v, .mov, .mp4, and .qt)
• MP4 – Stream MP4 (filename extensions .m4a, .m4v, .mp4)
• Streaming of RTMP and DASH is provided by the third-party RTMP module

HTTP Proxying

• FastCGI – Proxy and cache requests to FastCGI server
• gRPC – Proxy requests to gRPC server
• Memcached – Proxy requests to memcached server
• Mirror – Send copy of requests to one or more additional servers
• Proxy – Proxy and cache requests to HTTP server
• SCGI – Proxy and cache requests to SCGI server
• Upstream – Proxy and cache requests to load-balanced pool of servers
• Upstream Health Checks – Verify servers in load-balanced pool are operational
• uwsgi – Proxy and cache requests to uwsgi server

HTTP Transaction Shaping

• Limit Connections – Limit concurrent connections from a client IP address or other keyed value
• Limit Requests – Limit rate of request processing for a client IP address or other keyed value
• Limit Responses – Limit rate of responses per client connection

HTTP/2 and SSL/TLS

• HTTP/2 – Process HTTP/2 traffic
• SSL/TLS – Process HTTPS traffic

Mail

• Mail Core – Proxy mail traffic
• Auth HTTP – Offload authentication processing from HTTP server
• IMAP – Implement capabilities and authentication methods for IMAP
• POP3 – Implement authentication methods for POP3 traffic
• Proxy – Support proxy-related parameters for mail protocols
• SMTP – Define accepted SASL authentication methods for SMTP clients
• SSL/TLS – Implement SSL, STARTTLS, and TLS for mail protocols

Programmability and Monitoring

• NGINX Plus API – Provide REST API for accessing metrics, configuring upstream server groups dynamically, and managing key-value pairs, without the need to reload NGINX configuration
• Key-Value Store – Create variables with values taken from key-value pairs managed by the NGINX Plus API
• Management – Configure licensing and usage reporting of NGINX Plus installation to F5 licensing endpoint or NGINX Instance Manager

TCP and UDP Proxying and Load Balancing

• Stream – Process TCP and UDP traffic
• Access – Support IP-based access control lists (ACLs)
• Geo – Create variables based on client IP address
• Limit Conn – Limit concurrent connections by key
• Log – Log TCP and UDP transactions
• Map – Create variables based on other variables in requests
• MQTT Preread – Forward MQTT traffic without processing it
• MQTT Filter – Process Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol (MQTT) protocol
• Proxy – Proxy requests to TCP and UDP servers
• Pass – Pass any accepted client connection to any configured listening socket in http, stream, mail, and other similar modules
• Real IP – Determine true origin IP address for proxied traffic
• Return – Return specified value to client and close connection
• Split Clients – Partition clients for A/B testing
• SSL/TLS – Process TCP traffic secured with SSL/TLS
• SSL/TLS Preread – Forward TCP traffic secured with SSL/TLS without decrypting it
• Upstream – Proxy and cache traffic to load-balanced pool of servers
• Upstream Health Checks – Verify servers in load-balanced pool are operational