Friday, December 16 2022

What is a Proxy Server?

Rishi Raj Jain
Rishi Raj Jain @rishi_raj_jain_

In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. [1]

Let's learn via a scenario based approach to understand what is the request and response flow when a user (named, U) requests a resource (R) with a proxy (named, P) in between. Originally, R resides on server S.

1. U requests R

U requests R from P

2. P acknowledges the request for R, from U

3. P requests S for R

P requests R from S

4. S acknowledges the request for R, from P

5. S returns P with R

S returns R to P

6. P acknowledges the response of R, from S

7. P returns R to U

P returns R to U

This serves as a method to simplify or control the complexity of the request, or provide additional benefits such as load balancing, caching, privacy, and security.

References

[1] Proxy Server - Wikipedia

Write a comment

Email will remain confidential.