HTTP / Proxy

A reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that sits in front of a group of servers and acts as a gateway or middleman between clients and servers. It receives requests from clients, forwards them to the appropriate server, and then returns the server's response to the client.

Reverse proxies are often used to improve the performance, security, and availability of web applications and services. They can be used to offload common tasks, such as SSL/TLS termination, caching, and compression, from the servers, and to provide additional security measures, such as authentication, access control, and rate limiting.

Products

HAProxy

HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is an open-source reverse proxy and load balancer that is designed for high performance and reliability. It is commonly used to improve the performance, security, and availability of web applications and services, and can be used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers or to offload common tasks, such as SSL/TLS termination, caching, and compression.

HAProxy is a widely used and highly configurable reverse proxy, and is known for its high performance and low resource usage. It supports a wide range of protocols and features, including HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP, and can be used to load balance traffic to servers running any type of application or service.

HAProxy is often used in conjunction with other tools and systems, such as databases, web servers, and cloud services, to provide a complete solution for managing and scaling web applications and services. It is supported by a large community of users and developers, and is actively maintained and updated.

Envoy

Envoy is a high-performance, open-source proxy designed for modern, complex environments. It was developed by Lyft and is now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project.

Envoy is often used as a front proxy, meaning it sits in front of a group of servers and handles all incoming requests. It can also be used as a service mesh, which is a network of microservices that communicate with each other through a proxy.

Envoy has a number of features that make it well-suited for modern, distributed systems:

• High performance: Envoy is designed to handle a large number of requests with low latency.
• Dynamic configuration: Envoy can be dynamically reconfigured without requiring a restart, which makes it easier to manage in complex environments.
• Extensibility: Envoy has a pluggable architecture that allows you to extend its functionality through filters, which can be used to add features like rate limiting, routing, and observability.
• Observability: Envoy has built-in support for metrics, logging, and tracing, which makes it easier to understand and troubleshoot distributed systems.

NGINX

NGINX (pronounced "engine x") is an open-source web server and reverse proxy that is designed for high performance and scalability. It is widely used to serve static and dynamic content, as well as to act as a reverse proxy and load balancer for web applications and services.

NGINX is known for its high performance and low resource usage, and is commonly used to handle large volumes of traffic and requests. It supports a wide range of protocols and features, including HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP, and can be used to serve any type of content, including static files, dynamic pages, and media streams.

NGINX is often used in conjunction with other tools and systems, such as databases, application servers, and cloud services, to provide a complete solution for managing and scaling web applications and services. It is supported by a large community of users and developers, and is actively maintained and updated.

Apache HTTP Server

The Apache HTTP Server project (also known as Apache or HTTPD) is an open-source web server software that is developed and maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. It is the most widely used web server software in the world, and is often used to host web applications and websites on the Internet.

Apache HTTP Server is designed to be fast, reliable, and flexible, and can be used on a wide range of operating systems, including Linux, Unix, and Windows. It supports a range of protocols, including HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP, and can be extended with a range of modules that provide additional functionality, such as authentication, caching, and load balancing.

Apache HTTP Server is highly configurable, and administrators can customize various aspects of its behavior through a configuration file. It is also highly modular, and administrators can enable or disable various features by installing or uninstalling modules.