Reverse proxy deep dive(medium.com)
92 pointsby miggy11 days ago8 comments
  • philwelch7 days ago
    Original, Medium-free URL is https://startwithawhy.com/reverseproxy/2024/01/15/ReversePro...

    Meta request: can we change the URL to the original source? This isn’t quite blogspam (since it’s the same author reposting the same piece onto Medium) but Medium is annoying enough that I’d still rather resolve to the original source

  • MortyWaves7 days ago
    Caddy, Nginx, Traefik seem to be the most popular reverse proxies in the self hosting/homelab communities.

    I definitely prefer Caddy in my experience, so far.

    • ethan_smith7 days ago
      HAProxy deserves a mention alongside those - it's particularly strong for high-traffic production environments where its advanced load balancing algorithms and detailed metrics shine.
      • p_ing7 days ago
        I would argue this is the best mainstream proxy. Even better when paired with OpenBSD and CARP.
    • somehnguy7 days ago
      Caddy has been excellent for me thus far as well. I'm using it on a VPS to reverse proxy to the services I run at home via a Tailscale tunnel. Coming from Nginx in the past Caddy was drop-dead simple to configure.

      The entire config for each vhost is 3 lines, including the domain definition and closing brace - and that includes TLS!

      • MortyWaves7 days ago
        Just curious if you have Caddy running in Docker or normal?
        • somehnguy6 days ago
          Caddy is in docker via compose
    • joshbaptiste7 days ago
      Trying out ferron recently as a reverse proxy https://www.ferronweb.org/.. config is super simple
    • BrandoElFollito6 days ago
      I used to use Caddy for years and was active in the community.

      I switched to Traefik for a few reasons: labels configuration (there is a parallel version of caddy maintained by somebody else that does it), how middleware are implemented and the dynamic capacities of Traefik.

      Caddy is excellent, a brilliant piece of tech. For edge routing Traefik is worth at least considering.

    • lowwave7 days ago
      Is there a reverse proxies that can support DTLS support out of box without some kind experimental patch[1]?

      1: https://nginx.org/patches/dtls/

  • jeffbee7 days ago
    I would say the bullet points at the top are not strictly correct. The response does not necessarily transit the proxy. Responses can be returned directly to the client (DSR).
    • nyrikki7 days ago
      > Note: For simplicity, we’ll focus on Layer 7 (HTTP) reverse proxy.

      Layer 4 proxies are a very specific sometimes food that most people should actively avoid until they need it because of the tradeoffs.

      DSR is layer 4, and not in scope of this post.

      • jeffbee7 days ago
        Your comment, to me, only points out that the OSI layer model is nonsense. Envoy in DSR mode routes traffic based on application features, at "layer 7".
        • nyrikki7 days ago
          Envoy calls it Layer 4

          https://blog.envoyproxy.io/introduction-to-modern-network-lo...

          • jeffbee7 days ago
            That's fair. Of course that post also calls the OSI model "unfortunate" and "a poor approximation".
            • nyrikki6 days ago
              All models are wrong, some are useful.

              Layer 4 to 7 is useful in this case, as layer 4 involves forging tcp/udp packets, which is vastly different than say a http level reverse proxy.

              • thequux6 days ago
                If you actually read ITU T-REC X.200, which specifies the OSI model, you'll find that it doesn't match the modern internet at all. E.g., we don't have an OSI-style transport protocol at all (connections themselves aren't addressable independent of the SSAPs), TCP and UDP are actually layer 5, the presentation layer is protocol-specific, and pretty much the entire stack falls to bits if the network layer isn't packet switched.

                There's a separate term for the bits of the OSI model that are actually relevant; it's called the IETF model.

        • philwelch7 days ago
          The model itself isn’t nonsense because it’s not a model of load balancers; it’s a model of network protocols. Load balancers might handle multiple levels of the stack for the same traffic, but so does any other networked program, eg handling cross-domain redirects.
  • tdiff7 days ago
    Really looks like an ai-generated overview.
  • raincom7 days ago
    What's the difference between Reverse proxy and forward proxy? Is there something like "intermediate proxy"? Is this concept of L7 proxy, similar to DNAT/SNAT or Port forwarding in L3/L4?
  • vojtechrichter7 days ago
    Amazing read, I personally find it fascinating to make my own load balancer.
  • shelajev11 days ago
    It took me an embarrassingly long time to internalize what the reverse proxy is. My brain got stuck on the fact that it is just proxying requests. What's so reverse about this? Silly.
    • happytoexplain8 days ago
      It's one of the classic cases of a thing being named relative to what came before it, rather than being named on its own merit. This makes sense to people working at the time the new thing is introduced, but is confusing to every other learner in the future.
      • raincom7 days ago
        What came before "reverse proxies"? Just curious to understand the history.
        • p_ing7 days ago
          Forward proxies, proxies where client machines were configured to route all their outbound traffic through (similar to a router). Usually performed caching back in the day when the Internet tube was slow, later on got SSL decryption capabilities and filtering lists to make sure you stay off of your naughty sites and so the proxy admin could decrypt your banking credentials.
      • nosianu7 days ago
        Could be worse. All the many things named after people prevalent in some fields more than in others, biology/medicine for example. When you read, for example, "loop of Henle" or "circle of Willis" you don't even know where to begin. You either know the term or not.
        • happytoexplain7 days ago
          True, though I think it's often a larger challenge to capture the intrinsic quality of a medicinal compound or physiological feature than a man-made tool.
    • azaras7 days ago
      Nowadays, "reverse" is suppressed in most ways. I have heard that Nginx is a proxy more often than a reverse proxy.
      • daveguy7 days ago
        How about service proxy vs web proxy rather than reverse proxy and proxy? Makes more clear that one is a proxy on the service side and the other is a proxy on the client side. Service proxy and Client proxy might be even better.
      • Valodim7 days ago
        Except in the configuration where you use the reversep_proxy directive, of course
    • rini1711 days ago
      Since web proxy was originally used near clients, caching stuff to save precious bandwidth of their kbps-tier connection.
  • leptons7 days ago
    [flagged]