aiopquic 0.2.0

High-performance QUIC/HTTP3 library — picoquic-backed, qh3-compatible asyncio API

aiopquic - Async QUIC + WebTransport (picoquic)

aiopquic is a Python/Cython binding to picoquic, providing high-performance QUIC transport and WebTransport for asyncio applications.

Overview

aiopquic exposes picoquic's QUIC implementation through a lock-free SPSC ring buffer architecture that bridges the picoquic network thread with Python's asyncio event loop. It provides an asyncio QUIC/HTTP3 transport API in the spirit of aioquic (and its fork qh3) — similar shapes for QuicConfiguration, QuicConnection, connect() / serve(), and event types — plus a native WebTransport client/server layered on picoquic's H3 + h3zero. Note: not a drop-in replacement — semantics differ around backpressure (send_stream_data raises BufferError on full per-stream ring) and flow-control sizing.

Architecture

• SPSC Ring Buffers -- Lock-free single producer/single consumer rings for zero-copy event passing between threads. RX uses per-event malloc with ownership transfer at pop (1-copy delivery to Python via StreamChunk).
• Cross-platform wake fd -- Linux eventfd for efficient asyncio add_reader() notification; pipe() self-pipe fallback on macOS / BSD.
• Dedicated Network Thread -- picoquic runs in its own thread via picoquic_start_network_thread().
• Cython Bridge -- Thin Cython layer over C callbacks, minimal overhead.
• WebTransport -- asyncio.webtransport.WebTransportSession (client + server) over picoquic's picowt_* API and h3zero.

Features

• QUIC client and server support (qh3-compatible asyncio API: connect(), serve(), QuicConnectionProtocol)
• Stream data send/receive with FIN signaling, stream reset, stop_sending
• Datagram support
• WebTransport client + server (serve_webtransport, WebTransportSession)
• Connection migration / 0-RTT (inherited from picoquic)
• Connection management (create, close, idle timeout, application close codes)
• Per-cnx multiplexing on the server side via QuicEngine
• Native picoquic_ct / picohttp_ct subprocess smoke (catches upstream regressions on every submodule bump)

Test Results

Tests pass on Linux and macOS (excluding the network-dependent interop suite):

Suite	Tests	Coverage
test_spsc_ring	per-event malloc ring lifecycle
test_buffer	Cython Buffer (qh3-compatible)
test_transport	Transport lifecycle, wake fd, wake-up, connection management
test_loopback	17 tests — handshake, streams, FIN, reset, datagrams, ALPN mismatch, idle timeout, app-close codes, stop_sending, many-streams stress, TX-ring overflow
test_asyncio	qh3-compat client/server stream and datagram exchange
test_baton_pattern	Pure-QUIC baton-style stream multiplexing (UNI ↔ BIDI)
test_native_picoquic	picoquic_ct / picohttp_ct subprocess driver
test_interop	Real public endpoints (network required, opt-in)
tests/bench/	17 microbenches: ring push/pop, single-shot/sustained/parallel/bidirectional throughput, datagrams, RTT latency, handshake rate (opt-in via pytest tests/bench)

Installation

Requires Python 3.14+ and a C build toolchain. picoquic + picotls are built from source as git submodules.

git clone https://github.com/gmarzot/aiopquic.git
cd aiopquic
git submodule update --init --recursive
./bootstrap_python.sh
source .venv/bin/activate
./build_picoquic.sh        # builds picotls, picoquic, native test drivers
pip install -e '.[dev]'

On macOS, set OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR if Homebrew OpenSSL is not auto-detected (the build script tries openssl@3 then openssl@1.1).

Usage

Low-level Transport API

from aiopquic._binding._transport import TransportContext

server = TransportContext()
server.start(port=4433, cert_file="cert.pem", key_file="key.pem",
             alpn="moq-00", is_client=False)

client = TransportContext()
client.start(port=0, alpn="moq-00", is_client=True)
client.create_client_connection("127.0.0.1", 4433,
                                 sni="localhost", alpn="moq-00")

qh3-compatible asyncio API

from aiopquic.asyncio.client import connect
from aiopquic.quic.configuration import QuicConfiguration

configuration = QuicConfiguration(
    alpn_protocols=["h3"],
    is_client=True,
)

async with connect("quic.nginx.org", 443,
                   configuration=configuration) as protocol:
    quic = protocol._quic
    stream_id = quic.get_next_available_stream_id()
    quic.send_stream_data(stream_id, b"GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n", end_stream=True)
    protocol.transmit()

WebTransport

from aiopquic.asyncio.webtransport import (
    serve_webtransport, WebTransportSession,
)
# See src/aiopquic/asyncio/webtransport.py and tests/ for full examples.

Development

pip install -e '.[dev]'
python -m pytest tests/ -v -m "not interop and not native"

# Microbenches (opt-in)
python -m pytest tests/bench

Known Limitations

• Python 3.14+ required -- relax planned (test on 3.12/3.13).
• Free-threaded Python (3.14t) not yet supported -- the TX-ring producer side, TransportContext lifecycle, and the WebTransport engine state currently rely on the GIL for serialization. FT support deferred until a per-context locking audit lands.
• STOP_SENDING error codes surface as 0 today: picoquic's public stream-error getter only returns the RESET_STREAM code. STOP_SENDING's code lives in stream->remote_stop_error in picoquic_internal.h (no public getter). A small helper that pulls the field is straightforward future work — see TODO in src/aiopquic/_binding/c/callback.h.
• Source build only -- requires building picoquic + picotls from submodules; binary wheel distribution planned.

TODO

• Windows support (eventfd alternative — IOCP / WSAEventSelect on the wake-fd path)
• Free-threaded Python (3.14t) support after producer-side locking audit
• STOP_SENDING error-code surfacing helper (read remote_stop_error from picoquic_internal.h)
• Relax Python version requirement (test on 3.12/3.13)
• Per-stream wrapper cleanup on RESET/FIN before connection close (currently bounded leak per cnx)

Resources

• picoquic -- QUIC implementation by Christian Huitema
• picotls -- TLS 1.3 implementation
• Media Over QUIC Working Group

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A Marz Research project.

License

MIT License -- see LICENSE