The difference between forward agent and reverse proxy "Nginx reading notes"

The concept of forward agent

The forward agent, the legendary agent, works like a springboard,

To put it simply,
I'm a user, I can't access a website, but I can access a proxy server
This proxy server, he can access the site that I can not access
So I first connected to the proxy server and told him that I needed the content that could not access the site
Proxy server to fetch it back and then return to me

From the point of view of the website, there is only one record when the proxy server comes to fetch the content

Sometimes do not know is the user's request, also hides the user's information, depending on the agent does not tell the website

The conclusion is that the forward proxy is a server between the client and the original server (Origin server), in order to get content from the original server, the client sends a request to the agent and specifies the target (the original server), and then the agent forwards the request to the original server and returns the contents to the client. The client must make some special settings to use the forward proxy. 

The concept of reverse proxy

Continue with examples:

Example user Access Http://ooxx.me/readme
But there's no Readme page on the ooxx.me.
He was secretly taking it back from another server, and then spit it out to the user as his content.

But the user does not know

It's normal, users are usually stupid.

The ooxx.me of this domain name corresponds to the reverse proxy function set up here

The conclusion is that the reverse proxy is just the opposite, and for the client it is like the original server, and the client does not need to make any special settings. The client sends a normal request to the contents of the reverse proxy's namespace (name-space), and then the reverse proxy determines where (the original server) forwards the request and returns the obtained content to the client as if it were its own. 

The difference between the two

From the use to say:

The typical use of forward proxies is to provide access to the Internet for LAN clients within the firewall. The forward proxy can also use the buffering feature to reduce network usage. A typical use of a reverse proxy is to provide the server behind the firewall to Internet user access. The reverse proxy can also provide load balancing for multiple servers on the back end, or provide buffering services for slower servers on the back end.

In addition, the reverse proxy can enable advanced URL policies and management techniques so that Web pages in different Web server systems exist simultaneously under the same URL space.

From a security standpoint:

The forward agent allows a client to access any Web site through it and hides the client itself, so you must take security measures to ensure that only authorized clients are serviced.

The reverse proxy is transparent to the outside, and visitors do not know that they are accessing an agent.