Load Balancers and Reverse Proxies: Distributing Traffic Once It's Already Arrived
Every post in this series so far has been about getting traffic to the right network and the right host — routing between subnets, DNS resolving a domain to an IP, TCP getting bytes there reliably. This post is about the next question, the one that only matters once you have more than one server: traffic has arrived at your infrastructure, so which specific machine actually handles it? That's the…
This article discusses the importance of reverse proxies and load balancing in distributing network traffic once it reaches a server infrastructure. A reverse proxy acts as an intermediary between clients and servers, hiding server identities and offering benefits like TLS termination, caching, and security controls. Load balancing, the primary purpose of a reverse proxy, involves directing incoming requests to the appropriate backend server.
There are two types of load balancing: Layer 4 (Transport) and Layer 7 (Application). Layer 4 load balancing operates at the TCP/UDP level, focusing on IP addresses and ports, while Layer 7 load balancing operates at the HTTP level and above, allowing for decisions based on request content such as URL paths, headers, and cookies.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
