(Case study 06 / 11)
A Custom Rust Transport Protocol
Designed a binary transfer protocol in Rust over TCP/UDP with TLS. Local benchmarks showed roughly 10–12% lower latency than HTTP, and it installs with cargo install vstp.
10–12%Lower latency than HTTP in local benchmarks
100+Developers using the documentation
2Switchable transports: TCP and UDP
(The challenge)
HTTP is a document protocol that became the default RPC. For an internal hop that sends a typed payload thousands of times a second, status lines, header maps and text framing are real overhead. VSTP starts from one question: what is the smallest reliable frame if both ends already share a schema?
- Text framing and headers add cost to machine-to-machine traffic
- Services that share a schema don't need HTTP semantics
- A hot path can't afford a garbage collector or use-after-free bugs
(What we built)
Protocol and implementation
- A length-prefixed, typed binary frame carrying a version, a message type and the payload
- TCP for ordered delivery or UDP when loss is tolerable, selectable without changing the frame
- TLS under the frame so cleartext never leaves the process
- Written in Rust, installable with cargo install vstp
(The core insight)
(Selected screens)
(Results)
- About 10–12% lower latency than an equivalent HTTP POST in local benchmarks (a local measurement, not a WAN claim)
- Published as an open-source crate with public documentation
- Docs used by 100+ developers
(Technology)