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Comment by jessedhillon | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain what Kong does and why you would use it? I'm having a tough time finding anything of substance on the website which talks about why Kong exists

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Kong is meant to replace nginx or HAproxy but with additional functionality added as plugins. For example you could proxy any APIs or microservices and add authentication, rate-limiting and logging as plugins.

Nginx can also be extended with modules and Lua scripts, which can add authentication, rate-limiting and logging.

EDIT: It seems Kong doesn't really replace Nginx, it's actually a set of Lua scripts for Nginx.

Correct. Kong is Nginx on steroids (w/ Lua + Cassandra) for managing microservices.

Even though Kong uses Nginx under the hood as a user you interface with Kong through the CLI or REST API and don't deal directly with Nginx or it's config files. While Kong is a mix of Nginx + Lua + Cassandra it's meant to take the place Nginx in your software stack.

It's the 2nd main call to action in the middle of the page: http://cl.ly/image/230t2d0H403a

Yes, I guess it wasn't clear from my comment, but I have read their site. Assuming you're being sincere, this doesn't mean anything to me: http://imgur.com/BZz409G

Well.. to understand the value you need to have a bit of knowledge on how microservice architectures work and why an API Gateway (like Kong, which is the most popular OSS solution for that) is a fundamental part of it. ;)

I suggest to start from here to get up to speed: http://microservices.io/patterns/apigateway.html

From a cursory look, it's a set of Lua scripts that augment Nginx with features like authentication and such, so that you can avoid implementing them in the actual services.

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