Reverse Proxy - Uses of Reverse Proxies

Uses of Reverse Proxies

• Reverse proxies can hide the existence and characteristics of the origin server(s).
• Application firewall features can protect against common web-based attacks. Without a reverse proxy, removing malware or initiating takedowns, for example, can become difficult.
• In the case of secure websites, the SSL encryption is sometimes not performed by the web server itself, but is instead offloaded to a reverse proxy that may be equipped with SSL acceleration hardware.
• A reverse proxy can distribute the load from incoming requests to several servers, with each server serving its own application area. In the case of reverse proxying in the neighborhood of web servers, the reverse proxy may have to rewrite the URL in each incoming request in order to match the relevant internal location of the requested resource.
• A reverse proxy can reduce load on its origin servers by caching static content, as well as dynamic content. Proxy caches of this sort can often satisfy a considerable amount of website requests, greatly reducing the load on the origin server(s). Another term for this is web accelerator.
• A reverse proxy can optimize content by compressing it in order to speed up loading times.
• In a technique known as "spoon feeding", a dynamically generated page can be produced all at once and served to the reverse-proxy, which can then return it to the client a little bit at a time. The program that generates the page is not forced to remain open and tying up server resources during the possibly extended time the client requires to complete the transfer.
• Reverse proxies can be used whenever multiple web servers must be accessible via a single public IP address. The web servers listen on different ports in the same machine, with the same local IP address or, possibly, on different machines and different local IP addresses altogether. The reverse proxy analyzes each incoming call and delivers it to the right server within the local area network.
• Reverse proxies can be used to perform A/B testing and Multivariate testing without placing javascript tags or code into pages.