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A reverse proxy waits for a request from another server and responds to the calling server. You can think of a reverse proxy as the "deep backend" in a web stac
by redis_mlc 6y ago
A reverse proxy waits for a request from another server and responds to the calling server. You can think of a reverse proxy as the "deep backend" in a web stack.
One of the first and most powerful reverse proxies was mod_perl running under httpd. Typically 5 or 6 mod_perl instances can handle requests from 300 normal httpd children.
So when somebody says "forward proxy" they usually mean "not a reverse proxy."
- tyingq 6y agoMod_perl doesn't feel like a reverse proxy to me, it's just executing Perl in the Apache process directly. Fastcgi, on the other hand, is passing requests to persistently running standalone Perl instances, over a pipe, Unix domain socket, or tcp connection. Which feels more like a reverse proxy.
- mapgrep 6y agoMod_perl would more accurately be called a “commonly reverse proxied app server.” Typical setup was to have another Apache instance in front of it handling static requests and reverse proxying app requests.
- redis_mlc 6y agoNobody runs mod_perl in production except as a reverse proxy because of the RAM consumption and related issues.