Why does the x-kong-proxy-latency header exceed the timeout configured on my service?
Kong retries a slow upstream according to the service’s retries setting when the initial attempt exceeds the configured timeout, and each retry adds to the total latency reported in x-kong-proxy-latency. This is expected behavior — review your retries and timeout settings to match your use case.
Our services upstream is set to 60000ms (60 seconds). If our service delays for 70 seconds, we notice that Kong returns a 504 after about 5 minutes from 1 request. What is causing this behavior and how do we get Kong to time out after 60 seconds like it is specified?
Example Configuration:
x-kong-proxy-latency records about 5 minutes worth of delays.
x-kong-proxy-latency: 300007If Kong can’t access the upstream in the allotted time frame (in this case 60000ms), it will retry the request based on the retries configuration on the service.
If retries is set to 5, then it will attempt to access the upstream 5 more times, causing the header value for x-kong-proxy-latency to increase on each retry.
For example, if retries is set to 1, you’ll get the following:
x-kong-proxy-latency: 60006This is expected behavior. To tune your settings, discuss internally to determine if your timeout and retries are set correctly for your use case.