EP137: Proxy vs Reverse Proxy

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This week’s system design refresher:

• How SSH Really Works (Youtube video)

• Proxy vs Reverse Proxy

• 20 Popular Open Source Projects Started or Supported By Big Companies

• 10 Essential Components of a Production Web Application

• SPONSOR US

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How SSH Really Works

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Proxy Vs reverse proxy

A forward proxy is a server that sits between user devices and the internet. A forward proxy is commonly used for:

• Protect clients

• Avoid browsing restrictions

• Block access to certain content

A reverse proxy is a server that accepts a request from the client, forwards the request to web servers, and returns the results to the client as if the proxy server had processed the request. A reverse proxy is good for:

• Protect servers

• Load balancing

• Cache static contents

• Encrypt and decrypt SSL communications

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20 Popular Open Source Projects Started or Supported By Big Companies

• Google

  • Kubernetes

  • TensorFlow

  • Go

  • Angular

• Meta

  • React

  • PyTorch

  • GraphQL

  • Cassandra

• Microsoft

  • VSCode

  • TypeScript

  • Playwright

• Netflix

  • Chaos Monkey

  • Hystrix

  • Zuul

• LinkedIn

  • Kafka

  • Samza

  • Pinot

• RedHat

  • Ansible

  • OpenShift

  • Ceph Storage

Over to you: Which other project would you add to the list?

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10 Essential Components of a Production Web Application

1. It all starts with CI/CD pipelines that deploy code to the server instances. Tools like Jenkins and GitHub help over here.

2. The user requests originate from the web browser. After DNS resolution, the requests reach the app servers.

3. Load balancers and reverse proxies (such as Nginx & HAProxy) distribute user requests evenly across the web application servers.

4. The requests can also be served by a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

5. The web app communicates with backend services via APIs.

6. The backend services interact with database servers or distributed caches to provide the data.

7. Resource-intensive and long-running tasks are sent to job workers using a job queue.

8. The full-text search service supports the search functionality. Tools like Elasticsearch and Apache Solr can help here.

9. Monitoring tools (such as Sentry, Grafana, and Prometheus) store logs and help analyze data to ensure everything works fine.

10. In case of issues, alerting services notify developers through platforms like Slack for quick resolution.

Over to you: What other components would you add to the architecture of a production web app?

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