Demystifying Forward and Reverse Proxies

Today we are going to discuss web proxies. Most of us have worked with proxy servers. We at DLT Labs work with both forward, and reverse proxies.

But, before we dive into proxy servers, we must first understand: what is a proxy/proxy server?

A proxy server is a server that acts as a middleman in the flow of your internet traffic so that your internet activities appear to come from somewhere else.

Now that you know what a proxy is, let us return to our topic of discussion: web proxies.

Proxies are of two types: Forward proxy and Reverse proxy.

Forward Proxy

Whenever we talk about proxies or proxy servers, we are often referring to a forward proxy. Let me explain what a forward proxy server actually does.

A forward proxy provides proxy services to a client or a group of clients. Moreover, these clients belong to a common internal network. In other words, it retrieves data from another website on behalf of the original requestee.

We can understand this better with an illustration:

When any one of the clients in the group wants to do a file transfer over the internet, the request has to initially pass through the proxy server (i.e. the forward proxy in this case).

Whether or not this request is allowed depends on how the proxy server’s (i.e forward proxy) settings are configured. If the request is allowed — the client is able to transfer the file over the internet. If the request is denied, it is dropped by the proxy server.

In essence, it is the proxy server here that issued the request and not the client. So when the server responds, it addresses its response to the proxy.

But what happens when the forward proxy gets the response?

The forward proxy identifies the request that passed through it earlier and returns a response back to the client that made the request initially.

As we can see, the proxy can function as a single point of contact. Since this…