The difference between a proxy server and a reverse proxy server

When it comes to proxy servers, most people should be more familiar with it. Remember when in school because the campus network can not access foreign sites, so often use agents to visit foreign sites. However, referring to the reverse proxy server may be more unfamiliar to most people, the general proxy server and the reverse proxy server difference is not so clear.

Because of the work needed to study a bit, to find out what is going on here, make a note, also for everyone to share.

proxy servers typically fall into two categories, the forwarding agent (forward proxy) server and the reverse proxy (reverse proxy) server. The forwarding proxy server is often referred to as the proxy server, and the proxy server we refer to is the forwarding proxy server.

Forwarding Proxy Server

A normal forwarding Proxy server is an intermediate server between the client and the original server. in order to get content from the original server, the client sends a request to the proxy server, and then the proxy server obtains the content from the original server and returns it to the client. the client must specifically configure the forwarding agent to access other sites, such as configuring the proxy server address and port number in the browser.

A typical application of a forwarding proxy is to provide access to an external Internet network for internal clients behind the firewall , such as campus network users visiting foreign websites through proxies, Company intranet users through the company's unified agent access to external Internet sites and so on. The forwarding Proxy server can also use caching to mitigate the original server load and provide a response speed.

Reverse proxy Server

The reverse proxy server, on the other hand, looks like a normal Web server to the client. The client does not make any special configuration. The client sends a normal request to get the contents of the space that the reverse proxy belongs to. The reverse proxy determines where to send these requests, and then returns the requested content as if it were the original server itself.

A typical application of a reverse proxy server is to provide access to external Internet users to servers behind the firewall . The reverse proxy can be used to provide load balancing on multiple back-end servers , or to provide caching for slower back-end servers. In addition, the reverse proxy can easily map multiple servers to the same URL space .

Difference between the two

The similarities between the two are that both the user and the server are intermediaries, and the user requests and results are forwarded. The main difference is:

(1) The internal of the forwarding agent is the client, and the internal of the reverse proxy is the server. That is, the client in the intranet accesses the external network through the forwarding Proxy server , while the external user accesses the internal server through the reverse proxy .

(2) The forwarding agent usually accepts any request sent by the client, and the reverse proxy usually only accepts requests to the specified server . If the campus network internal users can access any foreign site through the forwarding agent (if unrestricted), and only a specific request to the reverse proxy, and then the reverse proxy sent to the internal server.

The difference between a proxy server and a reverse proxy server