have you tried making nodejs listen on a unix socket http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.4/api/net.html#socket.connect http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.4/api/net.html#socket

have you tried making nodejs listen on a unix socket http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.4/api/net.html#socket.connect http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.5.4/api/net.html#socket.connect and then set your proxy upstreams in nginx to use that? edit: scratch that, it seems you're using node on cluster of servers (not on same box as nginx). In which case the article is good advice.