Reverse Proxy VS Load Balancing
What is a Reverse Proxy ?
Reverse Proxy is the connection point that is places at the edge of the network. It receives the requests (HTTP/HTTPS) and can act like the initial endpoint . They act as the gateways that traffic must pass through before the request is forwarded to the destination server and the response can be returned back to the client. This allows reverse proxy to handle the policy management and traffic routing of the web servers.
A reverse proxy works in the following steps :
- receiving client request for connection
- processing and completing a TCP three-way handshake.
- termination of the initial connections.
- Connecting with the requested server and forwarding the original request
What is a Forward Proxy ?
A forward proxy provides proxy services to a client or a group of clients. It is also positioned at the edge of a network, but regulates outbound traffic according to preset policies in shared networks. Additionally, it disguises a client’s IP address and blocks malicious incoming traffic.
Forward proxies are typically used internally by large organizations for the following task:
- Improve the user experience by caching external site content
- Blocking malicious traffic
- Website filtering for employees
- Monitoring employees’ online activities.
What is a Load Balancing & Load Balancer ?
Load Balancing :
It is the process of distributing network traffic across multiple servers. This ensures that no single server processes too much traffic or load. By spreading the traffic evenly across different servers (or instances of the servers), load balancing improves application responsiveness and tasks handling . It also increases availability of applications for the users and decreases the downtime of any application.
Load Balancers :
A load balancer may be :
- A physical device, a virtualized instance running on specialized hardware or a software process.
- Incorporated into application delivery controllers (ADCs) designed to more broadly improve the performance and security of three-tier web and microservices-based applications, regardless of where they’re hosted.
- Able to leverage many possible load balancing algorithms, including round robin, server response time and the least connection method to distribute traffic in line with current requirements.
What is the difference between Reverse Proxy and Load Balancing ?
“Every load balancer that operates at layer seven (http) is a reverse proxy, but not every reverse proxy is a load balancer. You could say that a load balancer is a type of reverse proxy.”
Load Balancers that process at layer four or below are also considered reverse proxies but they have fewer features and functionalities as they don’t parse packets like HTTP.
A load balancer’s primary job is to take the requests and distribute the traffic over the number of servers.
A reverse proxy is still relevant for only one server. In such systems, load balancers are not required, but reverse proxy provides extra layer of security in that case.
