---
title: FARP & discovery
description: The farp section — service discovery and auto-routing, with mDNS, DNS, Consul, and Kubernetes discovery backends.
---

# FARP & discovery

FARP (the Forge API Gateway Registration Protocol) provides service discovery and automatic
routing. The `farp` section is optional and disabled by default. For conceptual depth, see the
[FARP](/docs/octopus/farp) section.

```yaml
farp:
  enabled: true
  watch_interval: 5s
  schema_cache_ttl: 5m
  discovery:
    backends:
      - type: kubernetes
        enabled: true
        config:
          namespace: default
          label_selector: "app.kubernetes.io/part-of=myapp"
          watch_interval: 10s
```

## `farp`

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `enabled` | boolean | `false` | Enable FARP service discovery and auto-routing. |
| `watch_interval` | duration | `5s` | Interval for discovering service changes. |
| `schema_cache_ttl` | duration | `5m` | Schema cache time-to-live. |
| `discovery` | object | none | Discovery backend configuration. See [below](#discovery). |

## Discovery

`farp.discovery` holds a list of discovery backends.

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `backends` | array | `[]` | Discovery backends. Each is tagged by `type`. |

Each backend entry has a `type` (`mdns`, `dns`, `consul`, or `kubernetes`), an `enabled` flag
(default `true`), and a backend-specific `config` object.

<Tabs items={['mDNS', 'DNS', 'Consul', 'Kubernetes']}>

<div title="mDNS">

```yaml
- type: mdns
  enabled: true
  config:
    service_type: _http._tcp
    domain: local.
    watch_interval: 10s
    query_timeout: 2s
    enable_ipv6: true
```

`type: mdns` — mDNS/Bonjour discovery.

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `service_type` | string | — | Service type to discover. **Required.** |
| `domain` | string | — | mDNS domain. **Required.** |
| `watch_interval` | duration | — | Watch interval. **Required.** |
| `query_timeout` | duration | — | Query timeout. **Required.** |
| `enable_ipv6` | boolean | `true` | Enable IPv6 discovery. |

</div>

<div title="DNS">

```yaml
- type: dns
  enabled: true
  config:
    servers: ["10.0.0.53:53"]
    domain: services.internal
    watch_interval: 30s
```

`type: dns` — DNS-based discovery.

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `servers` | array of string | — | DNS server addresses. **Required.** |
| `domain` | string | — | Domain to query. **Required.** |
| `watch_interval` | duration | — | Watch interval. **Required.** |

</div>

<div title="Consul">

```yaml
- type: consul
  enabled: true
  config:
    address: http://consul:8500
    datacenter: dc1
    token: "${CONSUL_TOKEN}"
    watch_interval: 10s
```

`type: consul` — Consul discovery.

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `address` | string | — | Consul address. **Required.** |
| `datacenter` | string | — | Datacenter. **Required.** |
| `token` | string | none | ACL token. |
| `watch_interval` | duration | — | Watch interval. **Required.** |

</div>

<div title="Kubernetes">

```yaml
- type: kubernetes
  enabled: true
  config:
    namespace: default
    label_selector: "app.kubernetes.io/part-of=myapp"
    watch_interval: 10s
    use_endpoint_slices: true
    include_not_ready: false
```

`type: kubernetes` — Kubernetes discovery.

| Key | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `namespace` | string | — | Namespace to watch. **Required.** |
| `label_selector` | string | none | Label selector for filtering. |
| `watch_interval` | duration | — | Watch interval. **Required.** |
| `use_endpoint_slices` | boolean | `true` | Prefer the `discovery.k8s.io/v1` EndpointSlice API (falls back to Endpoints if unavailable). |
| `include_not_ready` | boolean | `false` | Include endpoints whose `ready` condition is false/unknown. |

</div>

</Tabs>

<Callout type="info">
  The `farp.discovery.kubernetes` backend is independent of the in-process Gateway API controller
  configured under [`kubernetes`](/docs/octopus/configuration/kubernetes). See [Kubernetes](/docs/octopus/kubernetes)
  for how the two relate.
</Callout>