Hey! Great question. forwarding proxy vs reverse proxy trips up a lot of people.
Think of a forwarding proxy like a middleman for *your* requests—like when you use a VPN to hide your IP. A reverse proxy is the opposite—it’s the server’s bodyguard, handling requests *for* it (like Nginx routing traffic to backend servers).
Real-world example? At work, we use a reverse proxy (Cloudflare) to block DDoS attacks. Saved our butts big time.
For tools, check out Squid for forwarding proxies and Nginx/Traefik for reverse proxies.
Think of a forwarding proxy like a middleman for *your* requests—like when you use a VPN to hide your IP. A reverse proxy is the opposite—it’s the server’s bodyguard, handling requests *for* it (like Nginx routing traffic to backend servers).
Real-world example? At work, we use a reverse proxy (Cloudflare) to block DDoS attacks. Saved our butts big time.
For tools, check out Squid for forwarding proxies and Nginx/Traefik for reverse proxies.