RE: Reverse proxy ??

[Robyn Bailey <RBailey () netstarnetworks com>]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are otherwise known as "server switches"
(i.e. Nortel Accelar 750/Cisco LocalDirector).



-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Osman [mailto:sosman () terratron com]
Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 2:39 AM
To: Sandy Green; firewall-wizards () lists nfr net
Subject: Re: Reverse proxy ??


Reverse proxy is, as the name suggests, similar to "proxying backwards".

Rather than have a bunch of clients funnel into one proxy server, you would
actually have a bunch of servers funnel into one proxy server.

Consider an environment where you have 10 web servers handling critical
data.  You can put all these servers behind a firewall, so that your
critical data remains secure.  You then create a reverse proxy server which
handles all the requests, and depending on the path the request is then
forwarded to one of the actual web servers.  Further, your web servers don't
need to have routable IP addresses this way -- just one for the proxy.

In this way, your proxy server would:

take requests for http://www/dir1/ and forward the requests to server 1
take requests for http://www/dir2/ and forward them to server 2,
and so on.

The web servers could have very tight access control and handle requests
ONLY from the proxy server.

Other interesting scenarios are possible.  Consider

http://www/ny/ which forwards requests to the NY based-web server.
and
http://www/ca/ which forwards requests to the CA based server.

I've also used reverse proxy to allow several web servers' requests to be
handled by 1 IP address.

Steven Osman
Terratron Technologies Inc.

----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy Green <sand232 () yahoo com>
To: <firewall-wizards () lists nfr net>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 1999 7:27 PM
Subject: Reverse proxy ??


> There was a quetion here in this list about MS Proxy
> server with one or two NIC cards. In that context it
> was highlighted that with one NIC card "reverse
> proxy" will not be possible.
>
> But can someone explain as to what is reverse proxy ?
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