How it works
Engress separates control (who owns which endpoint) from data (HTTP flowing to your model). You only run the agent; Engress operates the edge pool, ingress, and placement layer.
Outbound-only agent
Your machine initiates a TLS connection to the Engress edge on the tunnel port. The agent multiplexes HTTP over that connection with yamux. Your router never accepts inbound connections for Engress — the tunnel is always outbound from you.
That design means home networks, corporate NAT, and laptops on café Wi‑Fi work without configuration.
Ingress and TLS
Public clients hit https://<your-subdomain>.edge.engress.io (or your custom hostname). Traffic arrives at the product ingress layer, which terminates TLS with Let's Encrypt and forwards to the edge pool. Clients see a normal HTTPS endpoint; they do not connect to your laptop directly.
Edge pool and placement
Multiple edge nodes run in the Phoenix region. A Director service tracks which edge holds each active tunnel. When your agent registers, placement picks an edge with capacity. The registry stores the mapping from your endpoint ID to that edge node.
You do not choose the edge manually. Reconnects may land on a different healthy edge after failover.
Drain and failover
Drain marks an edge as not accepting new registrations. Existing tunnels keep working until they disconnect naturally. The control plane stops placing new endpoints on that edge.
If an edge becomes unhealthy or is killed during maintenance, agents detect the broken connection and redial. Placement selects another healthy edge. Brief gaps may produce 503 responses with a Retry-After header while the agent reconnects — clients should retry.
Undrain returns an edge to the placement pool for new registrations.
What you operate vs what Engress operates
| You | Engress |
|---|---|
| Model server (Ollama, LM Studio, etc.) | Edge pool, ingress, TLS |
engress-agent process | Director placement, registry |
| Connect tokens (issue/revoke) | Token hashing, endpoint records |
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