How the Connector Shutdown Process Works

What you should know

  • Each Connector maintains connections to 4 Relays
  • Each Connector tells the Controller which Relays it is connected to via a regular heartbeat
  • Upon connecting to Twingate, the Controller sends each Client an ordered list of Connector-Relay pairs to try
  • The Client connects to the first Relay and Connector for the requested Resource

How it works on the backend

Let’s assume a typical setup with a Remote Network containing 2 Connectors (A and B). When Connector A goes down, the following happens:

  • The connections between Connector A and any Twingate Client connected to it are terminated
  • The Twingate Client tries to re-establish a connection to the first Connector-Relay pair in the list communicated by the Controller
  • The Relay waits for Connector A to establish a connection to it (this takes approximately 20 seconds)
  • Since Connector A is down, the Relay responds to the Client that it could not establish a connection to the first Connector-Relay pair
  • The Twingate Client then moves on to the second Connector-Relay pair in its list (i.e., Connector B, since the order communicated by the Controller iterates over Connectors when establishing the list)
  • The Twingate Client successfully connects to Connector B
A visual representation of the overall process.

Last updated 9 months ago