Networking Essentials medium
What is the key difference between a Forward Proxy and a Reverse Proxy?
- A A Forward Proxy acts on behalf of the internal client (privacy/egress filtering); a Reverse Proxy acts on behalf of the server (load balancing/security).
- B The Forward Proxy is optimized for the low-level delivery of HTTP content, while the Reverse Proxy handles complex binary protocols like FTP and SSH.
- C Forward Proxies must be implemented as specialized hardware appliances, while Reverse Proxies are strictly software-defined solutions running in a cloud.
- D A standard Reverse Proxy is fundamentally incapable of caching static content and must instead pass every single request directly to an upstream backend.
Answer: A. A Forward Proxy acts on behalf of the internal client (privacy/egress filtering); a Reverse Proxy acts on behalf of the server (load balancing/security).
A Forward Proxy (like a VPN or school web filter) helps a client access the internet securely and anonymously. The internet only 'sees' the proxy. A Reverse Proxy (like NGINX or Cloudflare) protects the server. Users think they are talking directly to the web server, but they are actually talking to the proxy, which then passes the requests to the real backend. This allows the server to perform load balancing, TLS termination, and caching in a central location while hiding the true internal IP addresses of the application servers.
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