Peb

Peb is a C++17 HTTP/HTTPS server and reverse proxy with multiple concurrency models.

Features

• Thread-pool server – one blocking thread per connection, HTTP/1.1
• Epoll + io_uring server – non-blocking I/O for many connections per thread
• Reverse proxy – backend pool with health checks
• TLS / HTTPS via OpenSSL
• Optional mutual TLS (mTLS)
• HTTP/2 (epoll target only)
• WebSocket support
• Static file serving
• Chunked transfer encoding
• Request body parsing (Content-Length and chunked)

Requirements

• Linux (liburing required for epoll target)
• CMake ≥ 3.20
• C++17 compiler
• OpenSSL development headers
• liburing development headers

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake libssl-dev liburing-dev

Fedora:

sudo dnf install cmake gcc-c++ openssl-devel liburing-devel

Building

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j

Executables are placed in build/:

Target	Description
peb	Thread-pool HTTP/HTTPS server
peb_epoll	Epoll + io_uring async server
peb_proxy	Reverse proxy with health checks
peb_tests	Unit tests
peb_benchmarks	Microbenchmarks

Development certificates

Self-signed certs are generated for local testing only. Do not use in production.

./certs/gen_cert.sh
./certs/gen_client_cert.sh

Running

./build/peb [http_port] [https_port] [static_root] [cert_path] [key_path] [client_ca_path] [require_client_cert]

Example with default paths:

./build/peb 8080 8443 ./public

Demo endpoints

• GET /api/health – { "status":"ok" }
• GET /api/time – current Unix time
• GET /api/stream – chunked response (5 chunks)
• POST /api/echo – echoes request body
• GET /api/whoami – client cert subject if using mTLS

Static files are served from static_root (default ./public).

Testing

cd build
ctest --output-on-failure

Benchmarks

./build/peb_benchmarks