A reverse proxy is required, especially for websites that receive a high volume of daily visitors. However, with a reverse proxy, this load is distributed among other servers to ensure peak performance. Another use for a reverse proxy server is to protect the server from malicious user attacks and also it provides plenty of other advantages. Let us see some of their major benefits:
Advantages of Using a Reverse Proxy:
Advantages of Using a Reverse Proxy
Load Balancing
A single origin server is not sufficient to handle all the incoming website traffic with a high volume of visitors per day. In that case, it will evenly distribute the traffic across different servers. Typically, all servers will host the same content to eliminate a single point of failure and try to make the website more feasible.
A reverse proxy. If the origin server becomes overloaded or fails, the traffic can be routed to other servers without interrupting the site’s functionality.
GSLB – Global Server Load Balancing
An advanced version of the load balancing method that distributes the website traffic around the world by the reverse proxy. It is typically accomplished through the use of anycast routing. This then selects the server node with the shortest travel time between the client and the server.
GSLB not only improves the site’s reliability and security, but also reduces latency, and load times and improves the user experience. To free up even more computational resources on the origin servers, combine GSLB with other network optimization techniques such as Spoon Feeding. You can also manually configure GSLB on your server; it is usually handled by dedicated CDNs such as Cloudflare and KeyCDN.
Optimized SSL Encryption
For each client encrypting and decrypting SSL/TLS requests can be extremely taxing on the origin server. A reverse proxy can handle this task by freeing up the origin server’s resources for important tasks such as content delivery. Another advantage is it reduces latency for clients located far away from the origin server.
To optimize this task further, you can use a reverse proxy with specialized SSL/TLS acceleration hardware. An SSL/TLS termination proxy is a type of reverse proxy. It can assist the security of traffic passing through them.
Enhanced Security
Reverse proxies can mask an origin server’s IP address and other details. As a result, your website’s origin server can maintain its anonymity more effectively; significantly it will increase its security. Also, it receives all traffic before it reaches the main server, any hackers or attackers will find it more difficult to target your website with security threats like DDoS attacks.
To harden the reverse proxy against common cyber-attacks, use a strict firewall. It is difficult to remove malware or begin takedowns without the use of a reverse proxy. A reverse proxy, such as HAProxy, can enable basic HTTP access authentication on a web server.
A/B Testing
In A/B testing most of the tools will use external JavaScript libraries. So loading third-party scripts can slow down your page load time and gives a rough experience for the user.
You can use it to create two different flows on the server level. To control traffic redirection, for example, you can use Nginx’s split_clients or sticky route methods.
Superior Compression
Server responses consume a significant amount of bandwidth. Compressing server responses (e.g., with gzip) before sending them to the client can reduce the required amount of bandwidth, allowing them to be delivered faster over the network. As it sits between the origin servers and the client, a reverse proxy is ideal for compressing server responses.
Traffic Monitoring and Logging
Any requests that pass through it are detected by a reverse proxy. As a result, you can use them as a central hub to monitor and log traffic. By using it, it will be easier to monitor all the incoming and outgoing data from your site, and also, you can use multiple web servers to host all of your website’s components.
Powerful Caching
It can be used for web acceleration by caching both static and dynamic content. It helps to decrease the load on the origin server and increase the website speed.
Consider if your origin server is in the United States and a website visitor is from Australia. You can serve a cached version of your site from an Australian reverse proxy server. Because the server is located closer to the user, the website will load faster and perform increases. Varnish and Nginx FastCGI are popular reverse proxies for caching web content.
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