Active Tracing for Latency Root Cause
infoKong's Active Tracing (now Konnect Debugger) provides OpenTelemetry-compatible traces showing exact plugin execution time, phase durations, and upstream latency breakdown—revealing bottlenecks invisible to external APM tools.
When P95 or P99 latency spikes occur without clear external cause, or when Kong latency is disproportionate to upstream latency, initiate Active Tracing session to capture detailed span data. Watch for specific plugins consuming >10ms or phases showing unexpected delays.
Start targeted tracing session via Kong-Debug header or Konnect UI. Filter by problematic routes, status codes, or time windows. Analyze trace spans to identify which plugin, phase, or upstream connection introduces latency. Use span attributes to correlate slow requests with configuration issues (auth failures, rate limit hits, transformer overhead).