Reverse Proxies

What is Reverse Proxy?

A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of web servers and forwards client (e.g. web browser) requests to those web servers. Reverse proxies are typically implemented to help increase security, performance, and reliability.

Benefits of using a Reverse Proxy:

• Load balancing
• Global server load balancing (GSLB)
• Caching content and web acceleration for improved performance
• More efficient and secure SSL encryption.
• Protection from DDoS attacks and related security issues.

For many sites, but especially for high-volume websites, a single origin server will not be sufficient to handle all inbound site traffic. A reverse proxy server can handle numerous requests for the same site, distributing them to different servers in an available pool.

This more evenly distributes inbound traffic, or balances the load among multiple servers, so no one web server will become overloaded. Should a single server completely fail, the reverse proxy server can redirect the other servers to manage the traffic.