Reverse Proxy

ELI5 — The Vibe Check

A reverse proxy sits in front of your servers and handles incoming traffic on their behalf. Clients think they're talking to your server, but they're actually talking to the proxy, which then talks to the real server. Nginx and Cloudflare work this way — they're the face you show the world.

Real Talk

A reverse proxy receives requests from clients and forwards them to backend servers. It abstracts the backend infrastructure, enabling load balancing, SSL termination, caching, compression, and DDoS protection. Clients are unaware of the actual server handling the request.

Show Me The Code

# Nginx reverse proxy config
server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  }
}

When You'll Hear This

"Nginx acts as a reverse proxy in front of the Node.js app." / "SSL is terminated at the reverse proxy layer."