[b]"What's the difference between a forwarding proxy vs reverse proxy? Which one should I use?"[/b] Alternatively:

Short answer: You’re not off at all!

Longer answer: Forwarding proxy vs reverse proxy is about *who initiates* the request. Clients? Forwarding. Servers? Reverse.

Web app? Reverse proxy (NGINX, Traefik). Internal monitoring? Forwarding (Squid, TinyProxy).

Gotcha: Reverse proxies can mask server IPs, but misconfigured, they’re a single point of failure.

Ever messed with Traefik? It’s like NGINX but with more automation.