Research: Ephemeral port exhaustion #630

Open @tcharchian opened 2026-01-23 20:09 UTC 3 comments Updated 2026-03-21 19:24 UTC

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💬 Comments (3)

@AlexeySamosadov commented 2026-01-24 21:13 UTC

Ephemeral Port Exhaustion Analysis

Summary

Found several patterns that can cause ephemeral port exhaustion due to improper HTTP client usage and missing connection pooling configuration.

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Critical Issues Found

1. http.DefaultClient usage without pooling config

File: internal/server/public/post_chat_handler.go:367

resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)

• DefaultClient has no MaxIdleConns/MaxIdleConnsPerHost limits
• Called in critical inference request path (handleTransferRequest)

2. http.Post() calls create new connections each time

Files: - internal/server/public/post_chat_handler.go:443 - tokenization - internal/server/public/post_chat_handler.go:525 - executor requests
- internal/validation/inference_validation.go:897 - validation

3. NewHttpClient() lacks Transport config

File: utils/http.go:14-18

func NewHttpClient(timeout time.Duration) *http.Client {
    return &http.Client{
        Timeout: timeout,
    }
}

Only sets timeout, no connection pooling configuration.

4. mlnodeclient creates Client without pooling

File: mlnodeclient/client.go:38-40

client: http.Client{
    Timeout: 15 * time.Minute,
}

5. New clients created per health check

File: internal/server/admin/setup_report.go:549,567 Creates new http.Client for each health check call.

6. No timeout in participant registration

File: participant/participant_registration.go:160

client := &http.Client{}  // No timeout!

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Recommended Fix

Create a shared HTTP client with proper Transport configuration:

var sharedHTTPClient = &http.Client{
    Transport: &http.Transport{
        MaxIdleConns:        100,
        MaxIdleConnsPerHost: 10,
        MaxConnsPerHost:     20,
        IdleConnTimeout:     90 * time.Second,
    },
    Timeout: 30 * time.Second,
}

Files Requiring Changes

1. utils/http.go - Update NewHttpClient() with Transport config
2. internal/server/public/post_chat_handler.go - Replace http.DefaultClient and http.Post()
3. mlnodeclient/client.go - Add Transport configuration
4. internal/server/admin/setup_report.go - Reuse single client
5. participant/participant_registration.go - Use configured client with timeout
6. internal/validation/inference_validation.go - Replace http.Post()

@tcharchian commented 2026-01-29 00:21 UTC

Hello @AlexeySamosadov, thank you for your contribution. However, I'd suggest waiting for @libermans or @gmorgachev to give a detailed description of the task and expected results.

@AlexeySamosadov commented 2026-02-08 14:14 UTC

PR created: https://github.com/gonka-ai/gonka/pull/656

Adds HTTP client connection pooling to prevent ephemeral port exhaustion.

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