Reverse Proxy

Load balancers look deceptively simple “split traffic across servers”, but they’re really the circulatory system of modern systems. They terminate connections, speak multiple protocols, apply routing policies, enforce security controls, measure health, and hide failure, all while keeping latency in the tens of milliseconds (or less) and throughput in the millions of requests per second. This guide goes deep: how load balancers actually work, the trade-offs behind common algorithms, what to tune for performance and reliability, and configuration patterns you can steal.

Before diving into setting up a reverse proxy with Nginx, it's essential to first understand what a reverse proxy is. To effectively use Nginx as a reverse proxy, we need to clear any confusion around the concept of reverse proxies.