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open-telemetry / semantic-conventions

Defines standards for generating consistent, accessible telemetry across a variety of domains
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Clarify `server.address` and `server.port` in forwarded situations #1387

Open dyladan opened 3 weeks ago

dyladan commented 3 weeks ago

Area(s)

area:server

Is your change request related to a problem? Please describe.

In https://github.com/open-telemetry/semantic-conventions/blob/bf0a2c1134f206f034408b201dbec37960ed60ec/docs/http/http-spans.md#clientserver-example-with-reverse-proxy the forwarded header may not contain enough information to determine the port if it contains host but not proto. The http semconv states that port is required if address exists.

Describe the solution you'd like

Please clarify what to do in this situation:

  1. Leave port undefined
  2. Do not set port or address
  3. Set port to a default value like 80 or 443
  4. look for port in further fallback options like x-forwarded-host or host headers, or use port of proxied request
  5. Capture the full Forwarded header
  6. Something else

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

While the Forwarded should contain enough information to determine the port, it may not in every situation. In these types of unexpected situations, telemetry is more important than ever.

dyladan commented 3 weeks ago

The same clarification would be needed if x-forwarded-host exists but x-forwarded-proto does not, and x-forwarded-host does not contain port information.

dyladan commented 3 weeks ago

I would recommend either option 1 or option 5.

trask commented 3 weeks ago

my initial thought is option 1

IIRC the purpose of making the port required when address is present was just to avoid the "default value" problem (does missing port imply default or imply it just wasn't captured)

in this case, a missing port value really would mean that it just couldn't be collected for some reason