authservice

Authentication Service: Business & Technical Overview

Service Overview

The Authentication Service is an independent security system dedicated to managing user sessions, validating tokens, and securing application access. It serves as a critical gatekeeper for high-volume API requests.

Core Functionality

• Token Validation: Processes incoming requests to verify user credentials and session validity.
• Session Management: Maintains active user states and security tokens.

Technical Specifications

• Primary Port: 9004
• Technology Stack: Golang with OpenTelemetry instrumentation.

Performance Characteristics

This service is designed with realistic production constraints:

• High Variable Latency: The system intentionally simulates latency spikes of up to 2000ms to test the resilience of upstream consumers. This mimics real-world network congestion or heavy database load during session lookups.

Observability

Full visibility is provided through standard metrics:

• auth_success_count: Tracks successful validation events.
• auth_fail_count: Monitors failed authentication attempts.

Integration Profile

The service primarily communicates with the User Service (Port 9005) to fetch profile-level identity data for session enrichment.