You may have heard the name of proxy servers and what they do. In this part of article we will be talking about the difference between reverse proxy server and forward proxy server. Why are they used and how you can setup a proxy server. Lets see Reverse proxy vs forward proxy.
Forward Proxy Server:
Forward proxy is a layer in front of normal original server. It works in really simple way, In this client which needs to contact the server make a request to forward proxy, the forward proxy makes a request to the original server gets the response or resource and sends it to the client.
Here forward proxy protects the clients by not letting the original server know about clients. The original server only knows about the forward proxy.
Here the original server thinks that all the requests are made by the forward proxy while it can be coming from multiple clients making request to the forward proxy.
Example: Squid Proxy server.
Reverse Proxy Server:
In reverse proxy, the client make request to the proxy and the proxy internally can make request to multiple servers configured and return the response to the client. In this case the reverse proxy is protecting the original servers by not allowing the clients to know about them.
In this case the client thinks that all the requests are served by the reverse proxy but in behind there can be many servers running and returning the resource you need.
Example: Nginx can work as reverse proxy.
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