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Sauce Connect Architecture

Sauce Connect 5 lets tests running in the Sauce Labs cloud securely access web or app resources that live behind your corporate firewall. It does this by opening an outbound-only tunnel from your network to Sauce Labs, so no inbound ports have to be exposed.

High-Level Architecture​

From Sauce Labs' perspective the system is made up of three building blocks:

  • Sauce Connect client (SC5 binary) - runs inside your network
  • Sauce Connect Server - runs in the Sauce Labs data center
  • Sauce Labs REST API - manager of the tunnel lifecycle (start, stop, status)

What Runs Inside Your Network​

Sauce Connect client consist of:

  • SC5 controller - the "brain" of the binary. Reads configuration, authenticates with Sauce Labs, negotiates tunnel creation, and supervises all other tasks.
  • HTTP/2 connection manager - maintains long-lived, TLS-encrypted HTTP/2 connections to the Sauce Connect Server. Automatically reconnects on network blips.
  • Forward proxy - embedded copy of Forwarder that proxies requests into your network.

Data Flow​

  1. The Sauce Connect client authenticates with your Sauce Labs account and requests a new tunnel via the REST API.
  2. The Sauce Connect client opens long-lived, TLS-encrypted HTTP/2 connections to the SC5 server.
  3. Browsers or devices in Sauce Labs send requests to the Sauce Connect Server; those requests travel through the tunnel to reach services inside your network.
  4. Responses follow the same path back.

Next Steps​