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Proxy Servers - Roadmap - SH

This guide explains the function of proxy servers, including forward and reverse proxies, which act as gateways between clients and the internet. Forward proxies manage client requests and can enforce security policies, while reverse proxies handle incoming requests for web servers, providing anonymity and load balancing. The document uses a restaurant analogy to illustrate the roles of clients, proxies, and web servers.

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0 views6 pages

Proxy Servers - Roadmap - SH

This guide explains the function of proxy servers, including forward and reverse proxies, which act as gateways between clients and the internet. Forward proxies manage client requests and can enforce security policies, while reverse proxies handle incoming requests for web servers, providing anonymity and load balancing. The document uses a restaurant analogy to illustrate the roles of clients, proxies, and web servers.

Uploaded by

ENGINEERING zone
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ebrahim Bharmal · Textual Guide · Improve this Guide

Proxy Servers
How do proxy servers work and what are forward and reverse proxies?

The Internet has connected people across the world using social media
and audio/video calling features along with providing an
overabundance of knowledge and tools. All this comes with an inherent
danger of security and privacy breaches. In this guide, we will talk
about proxies that play a vital role in mitigating these risks. We will
cover the following topics in this guide:

Proxy Server

Forward Proxy Server

Reverse Proxy Server

Summary

Proxy Server
:
Every web request which is sent from the client to a web server
goes through some type of proxy server. A proxy server acts as a
gateway between client (you) and the internet and separates end-
users from the websites you browse. It replaces the source IP address
of the web request with the proxy server’s IP address and then
forwards it to the web server. The web server is unaware of the client, it
only sees the proxy server.

NOTE: This is not an accurate description but rather just an


illustration.

Proxy servers serve as a single point of control making it easier to


enforce security policies. It also provides caching mechanism which
stores the requested web pages on the proxy server to improve
performance. If the requested web-page is available in cache memory
then instead of forwarding the request to the web-server it will send
the cached webpage back to the client. This saves big companies
thousands of dollars by reducing the load on their servers as their
website is visited by millions of users every day.
:
Forward Proxy Server
A forward proxy is generally implemented on the client side and sits in
front of multiple clients or client sources. Forward proxy servers are
mainly used by companies to manage the internet usage of their
employees and restrict content. It is also used as a firewall to secure
the company’s network by blocking any request which would pose
threat to the company’s network. Proxy servers are also used to
bypass geo-restriction and browse content that might be blocked in
the user’s country. It enables users to browse anonymously, as the
proxy server masks their details from the website’s servers.

NOTE: This is not an accurate description but rather just an


illustration

Reverse Proxy Server


:
Reverse proxy servers are implemented on the server side instead of
the client side. It sits in front of multiple webservers and manages
incoming requests by forwarding them to the web servers. It provides
anonymity for the back-end web servers and not the client. Reverse
proxy servers are generally used to perform tasks such as
authentication, content caching, and encryption/decryption on
behalf of the web server. These tasks would hog CPU cycles on the
web server and degrade the performance of the website by introducing
a high amount of delay in loading the webpage. Reverse proxies are
also used as load balancers to distribute the incoming traffic efficiently
among the web servers but it is not optimized for this task. In essence,
a reverse proxy server is a gateway to a web-server or group of web-
servers.

NOTE: This is not an accurate description but rather just an


illustration. Red lines represent the server’s response and black
lines represent the initial request from client(s).
:
Summary
A proxy server acts as a gateway between client (you) and the internet
and separates end-users from the websites you browse. The position
of the proxy server on the network determines whether it is a
forward or a reverse proxy server. A Forward proxy is implemented
on the client side and sits in front of multiple clients or client sources
and forwards requests to the web server. Reverse proxy servers are
implemented on the server side it sits in front of multiple webservers
and manage the incoming requests by forwarding them to the web
servers.

If all this was too much to take in, I have a simple analogy for you.

At a restaurant, the waiter/waitress takes your order and gives it to the


kitchen head chef. The head chef then calls out the order and assigns
tasks to everyone in the kitchen.

In this analogy:

You are the client

Your order is the web request

Waiter/Waitress is your forward proxy server

Kitchen head chef is the reverse proxy server

Other chefs working in the kitchen are the web servers


:
With that said our guide comes to an end. Thank you for reading and
feel free to submit any updates to the guide using the links below.

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