Axon Networks Docs

Quickstart

Deploy your first edge route on Axon Fabric in under five minutes. You'll need an Axon account (free) and the Axon CLI.

1. Install the CLI

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://install.axon.network/cli | bash

# Or via npm
npm install -g @axon/cli

# Verify
axon --version
# axon v3.4.1

2. Authenticate

axon auth login
# Opens browser to complete OAuth2 flow
# ✓ Logged in as you@example.com

3. Create a project and deploy a route

axon projects create my-first-project
axon init   # generates axon.fabric.yml
axon deploy # deploys to all regions

# Output:
# ✓ Route deployed: https://my-first-project.axon.network
# ✓ Propagated to 180 PoPs in 8.2s

Core Concepts

Understanding these concepts will help you get the most out of Axon Fabric.

Projects

A project is the top-level organizational unit. Each project has its own set of routes, gateway rules, and observability data. Projects map to a single billing account but can have multiple team members.

Routes

A route defines how traffic is distributed across your origins. Routes are declared in axon.fabric.yml and can use latency-based, weighted, or geo-aware strategies.

PoPs (Points of Presence)

Axon operates 180+ PoPs globally. When a user makes a request to your route endpoint, it's answered by the geographically nearest PoP — which then proxies to your optimal origin based on your routing policy.

Authentication

All API requests require authentication via a Bearer token. Tokens are scoped to a project and can be created in the dashboard or via the CLI.

curl https://api.axon.network/v1/routes \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer axn_live_k8xm2n9p..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Tokens beginning with axn_live_ are production tokens. axn_test_ tokens use a sandboxed environment that doesn't affect real traffic or billing.

Fabric

Fabric is the core distributed mesh that powers Axon. It handles anycast routing, automatic failover, and edge compute deployment across all 180+ PoPs — configured through a single declarative file.

fabric:
  name: api-prod
  origins:
    - id: us-east
      address: api.us.internal:8080
      weight: 60
  routing: latency

Full configuration reference and deployment guide are covered on the Fabric platform page.

Gateway

Gateway is Axon's programmable API layer at the edge — authentication, rate limiting, and request transformation, applied before traffic ever reaches your origin.

Common use cases include JWT/OAuth2 validation, per-route rate limiting, and canary traffic splitting. Full details on the Gateway platform page.

Observe

Observe gives you metrics, logs, and distributed traces in one place — with OpenTelemetry-native ingestion and SLO-based alerting.

curl "https://api.axon.network/v1/metrics/query?query=axon_latency_p99_ms" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer axn_live_..."

See the full metrics, logs, and trace query syntax on the Observe platform page.

Route

Route handles intelligent traffic management — latency-based routing, weighted load balancing, and geo-fencing, defined as declarative policy files.

Full routing strategies and policy syntax are covered on the Route platform page.

REST API Reference

The Axon REST API follows OpenAPI 3.1. The base URL for all API requests is https://api.axon.network/v1.

Routes

Gateway Rules

Metrics

SDKs

Official SDKs are available for the most common languages. All SDKs are open-source and published to their respective package registries.

Webhooks

Webhooks notify your systems of platform events in real time — route deployments, origin health changes, SLO breaches, and alerts. Axon delivers a signed POST request to your endpoint within 5 seconds of each event.

curl -X POST https://api.axon.network/v1/webhooks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer axn_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url":    "https://hooks.yourapp.com/axon",
    "events": ["route.deployed", "origin.unhealthy"],
    "secret": "whsec_your_signing_secret"
  }'

Common event types include route.deployed, route.failed, origin.unhealthy, origin.recovered, and slo.breach. All payloads are signed with HMAC-SHA256 — verify the Axon-Signature header before processing.

Examples

Regions

See the infrastructure page for a full list of regions and PoP locations. All regions are available to all plans; Enterprise customers can request dedicated PoP access.

Terraform Provider

terraform {
  required_providers {
    axon = {
      source  = "axon-networks/axon"
      version = "~> 3.4"
    }
  }
}

provider "axon" {
  token = var.axon_token
}

resource "axon_route" "api" {
  name    = "api-prod"
  routing = "latency"

  origin {
    id      = "us-east"
    address = "api.us.example.com"
    region  = "us-east-1"
    weight  = 60
  }
}