envoyproxy/envoy

Compression and decompression of gRPC through envoy proxy

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#41,893 opened on Nov 7, 2025

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Description

What is the proper way to use Envoy to compress and decompress application/grpc?

Description I am trying to compress and decompress application/grpc through 2 envoy proxies. One handling the compression and one the decompression. However, I find through Wireshark that the Envoy Decompressor filter breaks the gRPC protocol by failing to set the END_STREAM flag on the final DATA frame, which causes the backend server to immediately send a TCP Reset.

A similar issue has been opened since 2019 but not resolved.

Given this issue, what is the most stable and reliable implementation of compression and decompression through Envoy? Is implementing a header mutation filter to remove the trailers the recommended solution?

Contributor guide

Tech stack
cppgrpc
Domain
backendinfrastructureperformance
Issue type
bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
5
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
gRPCHTTP/2Envoy filter conceptsWireshark
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
15
Research direction
Investigate the Envoy decompressor filter source code (likely in source/extensions/filters/http/decompressor/) to understand how it handles END STREAM flag on DATA frames for gRPC. Review the referenced issue #6292 for previous discussion and unresolved problems. Test with a minimal gRPC client/server setup through two Envoy proxies to reproduce the TCP reset. Consider implementing a header mutation filter to remove trailers as a workaround, but the goal is to fix the decompressor filter to correctly set END STREAM as per gRPC over HTTP/2 specification.