Forward vs Reverse Proxy
A proxy can be described as a person who acts behalf another person to fulfil some purpose. In computer science context, a proxy also can be defined as a computer who acts behalf as another for making some communication. The proxy server can intercepts requests and act as serves back responses; it may forward the requests only or may modify it. There are two kinds of proxies, forward proxy and reverse proxy.
Forward Proxy
A forward proxy is one who acts as a different requestor, so this proxy encapsulates the original identity of the requestor. Forward proxy can be used by the client to bypass restrictions in purpose to visit websites that are blocked by government, company or etc. Another usage of forward proxy is it can also act as a cache server. If the content is downloading multiple times, the proxy can cache the content on the server so when next time someone is downloading the same content, the proxy will send the content that is previously stored.
Reverse Proxy
A reverse proxy does the opposite of what a forward proxy does. A reverse proxy acts on behalf of servers that respond to the client request. Forward proxies can hide the identities of clients whereas reverse proxies can hide the identities of servers. Reverse proxies have some use cases, like:
- Load balancing: distribute traffic to several servers
- Cache static content: offload the web servers by caching static content
- Compression: compress and optimize content to speed up load time
Summary
Proxy in computer science is a server who act behalf on someone. Difference between forward proxy and reverse proxy is pretty simple, forward proxy act behalf as a requestor and reverse proxy act behalf as a server that responds to request.
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