Forward Proxy and Reverse Proxy: The Differences
Distinguish similar concepts like a guru
A proxy, as its name implies, is an intermediate server between clients and origin servers, which plays an important role in the whole architecture of a web application. It may be confusing for beginners about the differences between the two types of it: forward proxy and reverse proxy.
Basically, the purposes and usages of these two are totally different.
Simply put, a forward proxy is a proxy for clients, a reverse proxy is a proxy for servers (so also known as a gateway).
Forward proxy
The forward proxy server, as a proxy for a client, will help a client request an origin server which a client may be hard to request directly.
For example, if one client is blocked by the origin server, this client can use a forward proxy server to request the content from the origin server and returns it to the client. In this case, the origin server doesn’t know who is the real client. Cause it only knows the forward proxy server sent requests.
On the other side, a client knows the origin server, and let the forward proxy help it request the origin server.
