OpenResty Edge is a platform based on the OpenResty open source web platform for setting up dynamic load balancers and reverse proxy clusters. The whole product or at least some core components of it can be used by either Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) and other web-based businesses for their web gateways and traffic entries.

Even though OpenResty is built atop NGINX and LuaJIT, no prior knowledge about NGINX and/or Lua is required by the OpenResty Edge product users. Most of the common configurations and operations can be done easily in a web UI (or REST API and SDK) without any coding or configuration file edits. It is designed to easily control and manage a big network of machines in a single central web controller.

Advanced users with complicated custom needs can also specify ad-hoc rules in the Edge domain specific language and the Admin portal will automatically compile the rules into highly optimized Lua code and push it across some or all of the server machines (or gateway nodes) on the Gateway Network (aka the edge), either public clouds or private clouds or their mix.

Tech-savvy users can further extend and/or customize the OpenResty Edge platform by writing Lua or C code, like introducing custom Lua libraries for OpenResty or loading custom NGINX C modules.