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Low-latency Edge Network

The Ory Network provides a global Edge Network to ensure low-latency access to critical-path APIs. These APIs are eventually consistent, which means that the changes you make are always reflected in the API, even if in some cases this might not be instantaneous.

Check Session API (toSession / /sessions/whoami)​

The /sessions/whoami endpoint has been optimized for maximum performance and low latency when using Ory Session Cookies. We achieve this with a planet-scale network edge cache. The cache strategy is as follows:

  • If the session credentials are unknown, the cache is bypassed;
  • If the session credentials are known and cached, the cache is served immediately and refreshed in the background;
  • If the session credentials are known and cached, the cache will respect Cache-Control: max-age=60 headers;
  • If the user updates their profile or steps-up their authentication, the session will be refreshed in the cache automatically.

Performance​

You can expect a P95 latency of ~60ms and a P99 latency ~70ms across the globe when the cache is used. Depending on your distance to our closest node, the latency may vary in your location.

Caveats​

There are some edge cases where caching might affect your business logic:

  • Changes made to the session or its identity through the admin API will not be immediately reflected in the /session/whoami endpoint;
  • In some scenarios, revoked sessions will not immediately be marked as inactive by the /session/whoami endpoint.

Force Refresh​

You can ask the /session/whoami API to return a fresh response by setting Cache-Control: max-age=0.

note

Bypassing the cache will significantly increase response latencies. Try to avoid Cache-Control: max-age=0 and use the cache as much as possible.

This will always fetch the freshest session data available and can be used in APIs where you need up-to-date data:

import { Configuration, V0alpha2Api } from "@ory/client"

const ory = new V0alpha2Api(new Configuration())

ory.toSession(undefined, undefined, {
  headers: {
    "Cache-Control": "max-age=0",
  },
})

The max-age defines what the maximum age of the cache can be. If you set it to 10, the server will reply with a cached response if the cache is no older than 10 seconds:

ory.toSession(undefined, undefined, {
  headers: {
    "Cache-Control": "max-age=10",
  },
})