What is a reverse proxy?
A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of your application, accepts incoming requests, and passes them to the app behind it. It terminates HTTPS, routes by hostname or path, and can cache, compress and rate-limit. nginx, Caddy, Traefik and HAProxy are the common ones.
Why does an app need a reverse proxy?
Because most apps listen on a plain HTTP port like 3000 or 5678 and know nothing about certificates or domains. The reverse proxy is what turns that into https://yourapp.com on port 443. It also lets several apps share one IP address, since it routes each hostname to the right process.
- TLS termination: the proxy holds the certificate so your app does not have to.
- Hostname routing: many apps, many domains, one server and one IP.
- Buffering and compression: slow clients and large responses stop tying up your app process.
- A safety layer: rate limits, request size caps, and a place to block traffic before it reaches your code.
nginx and Apache remain the two most widely deployed reverse proxy and web server programs on the public web. Source: W3Techs web server usage survey
What is the difference between a forward proxy and a reverse proxy?
A forward proxy sits in front of clients and hides them from the server, which is what a corporate proxy or a VPN does. A reverse proxy sits in front of servers and hides them from clients. Same machinery, opposite direction: one protects who is asking, the other protects what is answering.
Do you have to configure nginx yourself?
Only if you are building the server yourself. On a raw VPS you write the nginx server block, point it at your app port, run certbot, and set up renewal. On InstaPods the proxy and the certificate are wired up when the pod is created, so an app that listens on port 3000 is reachable over HTTPS immediately.
This is one of the four jobs that make classic self-hosting slow, and it is the one that breaks most often, because a certificate that fails to renew takes the site down 90 days after everything looked fine.
Where reverse proxy shows up on InstaPods
Related terms
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