#6268·Xray-core

High xray client memory consumption for xhttp/http2 server

Author: darkkCreated Jun 4, 2026Updated Aug 27, 2026
### Integrity requirements - [x] I have read all the comments in the issue template and ensured that this issue meet the requirements. - [x] I confirm that I have read the documentation, understand the meaning of all the configuration items I wrote, and did not pile up seemingly useful options or default values. - [x] I provided the complete config and logs, rather than just providing the truncated parts based on my own judgment. - [x] I searched issues and did not find any similar issues. - [x] The problem can be successfully reproduced in the latest Release ### Description I've investigated high memory consumption of an iOS Network Extension (NE) for an app based on xray-core and found an interesting quirk specific to HTTP/2. The overall stack pins significant amount of RAM, 0.5+ MiB per conn, to maintain idle(?) connections. The largest heap user (inuse_space per pprof) was `http2.(*clientStream).writeRequestBody` function: or (another crash of the same kind) These goroutines were blocked on `io.(*pipe).Read()`. OOM was happening as soon as there were ≈25 of them. I suspect, that's the Pipe() from splithttp.Dial(): https://github.com/XTLS/Xray-core/blob/fdb9b616fc0edf8fb4c3285870388947b92669fc/transport/internet/splithttp/dialer.go#L441 The `writeRequestBody()` comes from http2 client in x/net/http2/transport.go. It allocates some memory for scratch buffer to read from Pipe: https://github.com/golang/net/blob/8ecbaa95fea823c19fa74c5c3b53e0bccd473828/http2/transport.go#L1506-L1515 `writeRequestBody()` does a reasonable thing. The API author probably assumed, that the pipe is a "local" (e.g. file), so it was unexpected for the x/net/http2 code to block for a long time, waiting for Pipe to be written to. Content-Length is not known in advance in xHTTP, so the `frameScratchBufferLen()` defaults to `min(512KiB, SETTINGS_MAX_FRAME_SIZE)`: https://github.com/golang/net/blob/8ecbaa95fea823c19fa74c5c3b53e0bccd473828/http2/transport.go#L1451 Default `SETTINGS_MAX_FRAME_SIZE` seems to be 1MiB Go x/net/http2. It's `http2.defaultMaxReadFrameSize` and server sends `{SettingMaxFrameSize, conf.MaxReadFrameSize}` as a part of SETTINGS frame to avoid default 16 KiB limit: https://github.com/golang/net/blob/8ecbaa95fea823c19fa74c5c3b53e0bccd473828/http2/http2.go#L85 So, if I understand the case correctly, each idle connection pins at least 512 KiB of buffers on the client side just to maintain possibility to upload data via possibly-idle HTTP/2 stream. #4749 expressed concerns about MaxReadFrameSize tuning in high-bandwidth scenarios. I've done two tests with iPhone 12 running xray-core with frameScratchBufferLen reduced from 512 KiB to 16 KiB. Both tests were using landline connections, with Wi-Fi 6, running on top of Gigabit Ethernet - link soft-capped at 100 Mbit/s - iPhone was still able to saturate 100 Mbit/s just fine, OOKLA's Speedtest resulted in 110 Mbit/s (upload) - link soft-capped at 800 Mbit/s - OOKLA's Speedtest uploads as 215...230 Mbit/s The 512-to-16 KiB patch changed heap profile: The thing that changes the most is the number of goroutines waiting in writeRequestBody right before OOM: the number went from ≈25 to ≈200. Yet, this number looks strange on its own and it's another thing I'm going to investigate. The takeaways are the following: - xray-core might provide an option to tune `MaxReadFrameSize` for the h2 listener and, maybe, other options of [http2.Server/http2.Transport](https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/net/http2#section-readme), it'll not help when h2 is terminated at a CDN, but will help self-hosters with REALITY - iOS apps maintainers may want to patch `frameScratchBufferLen()` in Go http2 library to reduce per-connection overhead - Go http2 library might provide a setting to cap frameScratchBufferLen and/or provide a better platform-specific default - mux seems to have potential to help with such setups ### Reproduction Method My test-case was specific: - feed refresh in [VK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(service)) app triggered a small connection spike - it was enough to hit 50 MiB limit after a two-three refreshes - I polled `/debug/pprof/heap?gc=1` every two seconds and investigated the profile ### Client config xray-core versoin: v26.6.1, go1.26.3

{
  "inbounds": [
    {
      "settings": {
        "udp": true
      },
      "port": NNN,
      "listen": "127.0.0.1",
      "protocol": "socks"
    }
  ],
  "outbounds": [
    {
      "streamSettings": {
        "xhttpSettings": {
          "path": "/"
        },
        "security": "reality",
        "realitySettings": {
          "publicKey": "...........................................",
          "serverName": "example.net",
          "spiderX": "/",
          "shortId": "",
          "fingerprint": "..."
        },
        "network": "xhttp"
      },
      "protocol": "vless",
      "settings": {
        "vnext": [
          {
            "address": "a.b.c.d",
            "users": [
              {
                "id": "ffffffff-ffff-ffff-ffff-ffffffffffff",
                "encryption": "none"
              }
            ],
            "port": 443
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}
### Server config n/a ### Client log n/a ### Server log n/a