Proxy vs Reverse Proxy Server Explained

going on guys my name is Visayan and in this video i want to discuss the difference between a proxy and reverse proxy I made a video two years ago and I want to remake this video and talk about things that I haven't talked about in the previous video things that I recently learned from and from you guys like how you had a lot of questions I compile these questions into this video as well so if you're interested stay tuned how about we jump into the video so the first thing is what is a proxy a proxy is a software that makes requests on behalf of a client so in this case for example the client here the laptop says hey I want to go to google.com but it has certain configuration it's in a setting that says by the way this is my proxy that means any request that needs to go out have to go through the proxy first so all the connections is actually established between those two guys only all right and then the proxy will look at the data as is oh oh you want to go to google.com all take care of it I'll make the request of your behalf so as far as Google is concerned or any distinction server here the client is the proxy not this guy right so that's essentially when a proxy is right you might say okay what I'll use cases for that well some ISPs use proxies to block certain unwanted websites and government certain government not all of them right at your work some organization uses a proxy they want to protect you from bad website that well this is confidential data and we don't want you to visit bad website so this is a list of things that you shouldn't access and we can know because we keep the list right here so if you try to access certain website that we think that is a phishing website we're gonna block you right here we're gonna block that website okay and another use cases okay my one I want to cache this stuff we just made another person just made a request for certain content hey I have it cached here don't bother I'm not gonna go to the server to pull this content again I'm just gonna serve it back to you so that's where you use a proxy how about some use cases of a proxy each case of proxy is caching caching is very popular where hey I won I wanna I'm consuming this content but someone else already have done it so as you have this centralized location where all the some of the requests going through the proxy the proxy can serve your cached content this could be bad or good but nevertheless it's a good idea sometimes right anonymity anonymity from this their final destination the final the station doesn't know that originating client as we have discussed here as far as Google is concerned this is the client right not this one right so this is kind of a anonymity right coding code you are kinda understand that you're transferring the anonymity from one place to another cuz yes Google doesn't know who you are anymore but the proxy does logging yeah and again in a work environment a I want to log everybody request and say ok this website is being visited a lot so maybe it's time to start caching this website or maybe this guy is oh this is this guy's always on Facebook oh why is he doing that right block up starts hey I don't want you are you Spees and dwarf situations can actually do that right if it can protect you from bad websites or or it actually if certain government right can forces clients to actually use a proxy to access the Internet it sounds like hey without with others proxy you cannot exit the internet I'm sorry so if the moat used to use a proxy any website goes any request goes through that ISP proxy the moment you do that well they can see certain information not everything at least the domains we we can go ours talking about that stuff right block up side microservices is one of the recent change use cases of proxy especially a sidecar proxies there are many type proxies guys this yeah HTTP proxy TCP proxy sidecar proxy so microservices is also another use case where you can deploy a proxy next to your application and have it take care of networking stuff right so if you make a simple request right let's say an HTTP one request that sidecar proxy can actually start upgrading the request to a a newer protocol as HTTP to HTTPS right so it can do that for you because it know how to speak that language you just speak in a primitive way between these two and this could be the bad ass configuration right they can they can use G RPC they can use very high tech at the back end right so that's another use case for micro services micro service actually uses both proxy and reverse proxy jumping to the reverse proxy the reverse proxy is actually the reverse and I hate that because it's very confusing I know in the proxy configuration the server doesn't know the client in the reverse proxy the client doesn't know the final destination server it's just really reversed right so if here you want to go to google.com which is your final destination but guess what Google does come in itself is a reverse proxy it is not the true final destination and you don't know that because guess what the proxy in this case will make the request still on your behalf but you don't know that they will communicate to either Google server 1 or blue over 2 or Google server 3 and this is one use case of a reverse proxy called load balancing right ok I want to go to this or no maybe it's I'm gonna use a canary deployment well I'm testing that 8% of users should use this new version of the application right and you Instagram does that all that time right or YouTube does that all the time hey we're testing all the requests a percent of the requests we were testing this new feature right this new functionality oh well 8% of the requests literally in the reverse proxy will get a phone alert to this destination and that's it that's how you get the new functionality all right so that's the reverse proxy again very quick in the proxy the server doesn't know the client reverse proxy the client doesn't know the final destination that's that's the simplest I can get it really right and let's think about rivers proxy use skills more reverse proxy use Gizem caching is again shows that shows up again I want to make a request to Google calm and the google.com is a reverse proxy well it it will cache content for me so that I don't have to it doesn't have to go to to the back-end & Fitch's information for me right formation that are already being fetched so cache is very important load balancing something you cannot do it blood just a proxy a lot balancing hey I am you're making a request to me which is the reverse proxy I'm sometimes gonna hit this server sometimes you gotta hit this server sometimes I'm gonna this server and there are so this you can speak about this for hours guys I made so many videos about load balancing there are many types of web dancers layer for load balancers layer seven load versus layer three load balancers it is a complicated topic if you want to learn more I'm gonna reference the playlist is gonna in the comment section go dive deep into it and just enjoy this is huge huge huge huge feature right so not bad thing ingress in kubernetes and micro servers and architecture who says hey alright you talk to me sir as a reverse proxy your client talk to me reverse proxy and guess what if you want to access the pictures API I'm gonna funnel you to this API if you're doing going to the comments API I'm going to funnel you to this so that's called on ingress where it's actually based on certain filtering on the content at least the HTTP side says oh you want to go to this you want to consume the comments API you want to consume the pictures API you want to consume this API right well I'm gonna take you to the actual service that is responsible of serving you this content so it's not really not balancing its kind courses on ingress where it's kind of like like a router right say this goes here this goes here this goes here very important features in copper nineties canary deployment cannae deployment is where we talked about right this is hey I'm experimenting that 3% of all YouTube videos should have a random generated thumbnail that's the kinetic deployment how do they do it reverse proxy rules they have rules and they define it in the reverse proxy examples of reverse proxies guys by the way hundreds of them right there are H a proxy there is engine X there is invoice there is LinkedIn LinkedIn link Rd already run out I say hundred but I can think of a lot of people that yeah caddy observer some people some some servers are act like a web server and a reverse proxy which is awesome and finally the micro services yes a micro service architecture reverse proxies are also a key where each service sometimes as a sidecar plays like a sidecar it's both a proxy and a reverse proxy at the same time we're gonna talk about that alright guys so these are the most common questions that I have collected over over the years and just from reading my comment section on the YouTube channel the first question is can the proxy and the reverse proxy be used at the same time yes there is a use case where a proxy can act also as the reverse proxy at the same instance and this is called the service mesh right a service mesh or a sidecar proxy and like linker D or sto or envoi are used in micro services architecture and it is used all the time to kind of build the networking feature of the application in the proxy itself instead of and focus the application to write its own features and stead of worrying about timeouts and circuit break and all that garbage right so that's a use case where a proxy can act like a reverse proxies in a second your question is can I use a proxy instead of VPN for anonymity well you can yeah you can but you have to really know what they're doing turn it technically VPN is more secure than a proxy because they are at lower level and VPN the only thing the VPN can see in your content is that domain that and that's assuming every website you're visiting the padlock and at HTTP right assuming I'm talking about only web traffic here but yeah if the Vivian can only see the domains right you had you going to facebook.com they can see that right you're going to this website that code a proxy is more dangerous because some proxies can not only see the domains they can see everything if they are TLS terminating proxies if they are that type then actually they can just see everything you're doing and you don't want that right so if you want to use a proxy know that it's not a TLS termination proceeding if it's that then it's essentially decrypting the traffic and serving you its certificate so - no - no it's very easy go to the padlock and click on it and see that it's being served by the final destination web server not the proxies or certificate right but yeah to be honest I I don't use a VPN or a proxy right because first of all I don't have a use case where I want to visit I'm I live in the United States so any page is pretty much open right but if I want to use an eternity I'm not gonna use a VPN because VPN still the anonymity is transferred from from my ISP to the VPN so the VPN know where I'm going and web sites I'm visiting but yeah even I don't have a use case so I don't use a VPN or a proxy I'm sorry I might consider using it for to access some content that I'm not supposed to watch in the United States some UK shows right I would I would use a VPN but yeah I don't use that any of them Plus as long as the website is secure that's good right and the domains really I mean yeah they can they can look that I'm you I'm viewing amazon.com or Facebook account yeah so it's I'm really worried about that much so that's just me is proxy just for HTTP traffic no you can have so many types of proxies there is Sox proxies which is a very low level there is a news for tunneling there is a there's HTTP proxy which tunnels all tunnels which only forwards traffic for HTTP right there is HTTP traffic proxy which can act both ways as a tunneling proxy using the connect HTTP method which is safer or as a TLS termination which is you want to use the examination or reverse proxies TLS termination proxies and you use it for your normal days that's a no-no yeah alright guys that's it for me hopefully it was a quick video I don't know if it's worse than the one I made but hey I just thought it a good idea to just remake this video guys for you and then follow me on Twitter send me your great questions I love to leave them subscribe to this channel to see more software engineering backend technology I talk about all that stuff in this channel and I'm gonna see you in the next one do you guys stay awesome

Channel: Hussein Nasser

Views: 106,964

Keywords: proxy vs reverse proxy, forward proxy vs reverse proxy, reverse proxy vs forward proxy, reverse proxy explained, forward proxy explained, proxy, reverse proxy

Id: SqqrOspasag

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020