What Is a Reverse Proxy?

A reverse proxy acts as a go-between piece of network architecture that sits between user devices and the web servers they try to connect to. By acting as a middle point, a reverse proxy is able to intercept user connections and direct their requests more efficiently to a server. Reverse proxies help with load balancing and as a method of protecting servers from attacks.

How Does a Reverse Proxy Work?

Sitting just in front of the network servers, a reverse proxy monitors and regulates all the data that passes between user clients and the servers. As a middleman, it ensures that user clients on the Internet never actually interact with a server, instead passing data between the two.

Here’s how a reverse proxy works:

1. Client Browses: A user browses the Internet on their device and tries to connect to a certain website or webpage.
2. Reverse Proxy Accepts Request: The reverse proxy will see this incoming connection and will check its files to see whether or not it can accept the connection.
3. Reverse Proxy Investigates Connection: If the connection is accepted, the reverse proxy will then run it through a firewall, checking for potentially malicious elements hidden within the connection. If none are found, it will then forward the connection’s request to the web server.
4. Web Server Responds to Request: The web server will respond to the request, gathering the necessary data and sending it back to the reverse proxy.
5. Reverse Proxy Forwards Request: Finally, the proxy will then forward this data back to the user’s client, displaying it on their page and delivering the information they wanted to access when they clicked on the web page.

Benefits of Using a Reverse Proxy

There are a number of benefits of using a reverse proxy, making this piece of network architecture highly useful for businesses.

• Improve Security: A reverse proxy can inspect connections and requests, passing them through a network proxy firewall to determine whether or not they are authentic connections. Being able to block potentially malicious connections will help to protect from a number of common threat vectors.

• Enhance Server Performance: A reverse proxy can also act as a load balancer for your web servers. It will analyze which servers have the least amount of computation occurring in any one moment and choose to forward the connection to that server. This maintains a stable level of performance across all of your available servers and reduces the likelihood of traffic spikes causing slow server responses.

• Accelerate Connection Speeds: Reverse proxies can cache certain data that is frequently accessed or requested by user clients. By having this information on hand, they can improve the speed of a server response while also freeing up network resources from having to continuously generate the same response.

• Facilitate Logging: Another benefit of using a reverse proxy is that it creates a singular platform that all connections move through. Having this centralized data structure ensures that all connections that go in and out of the servers are logged, helping to improve analysis and monitoring for administrators.

Use Cases for Reverse Proxies

Reverse proxies help businesses improve their network security and enhance performance by:

• Protecting Web Servers: Reverse proxies act as a strong barrier between incoming connections and your valuable web servers. By implementing them, you are able to screen connections before they enter your web server architecture, helping to reduce the likelihood of nefarious connections.
• Maintaining Website Availability: Without a reverse proxy, a website may experience peak traffic periods where its servers overload and leave customers unable to connect.
• Improving Content Delivery: If your website has a great deal of content on it, then the ability for reverse proxies to cache and relay information will help streamline content distribution.

Reverse Proxy vs. Forward Proxy

A reverse proxy and a forward proxy both serve a similar function – interacting with incoming traffic, determining whether it is authentic, and then distributing the connection onward.

The central difference between these proxies is where exactly they sit in the connection process.

• A reverse proxy sits just before the web servers. Incoming traffic from the internet connects to the reverse proxy, which then distributes the connection to available servers.
• A forward proxy works on the other end of this pathway. A connection leaves a user’s device, and encounters the forward proxy, which can then choose to block the connection or forward it to the internet.

Neither one of these proxies is better than the other – they both serve unique purposes that make them useful to network administrators.

How to Implement a Reverse Proxy

Businesses could choose to construct their own reverse proxy and implement it into their existing network architecture. But, this is a large undertaking considering that there are already several effective choices of pre-built reverse proxies to choose from.

Instead of developing a reverse proxy from scratch, companies can deploy an existing reverse proxy in front of their servers. Administrators will only need to define:

• What servers are protected by the proxy
• How it should distribute requests across them to best support the various server limits

After integrating a reverse proxy, it’s advisable to run tests that ensure everything is working well, including during traffic spikes.

Proxy Firewall Security with Check Point

Network architecture, like a company’s servers, is the backbone of a business. Implementing security infrastructure that helps to support your servers, reduce strain on them, and improve their handling of incoming requests will streamline your business and improve its internal network functioning.

Check Point’s Check Point Force offers an extensive range of 10 gateways to keep your network safe from threats and streamline performance. From cloud network firewalls to seamless network perimeter protection, Check Point Force offers a comprehensive level of network protection. Check Point Force’s Secure Gateway offers reverse proxy support, helping to improve performance and block direct attacks against your servers.