Forward or Reverse

You may have heard the terms "Forward Proxy" and "Reverse Proxy" and wondered what's the difference and also wonder, which one do I need for my organization?

Back in the early days of the web the answer was simple. Most companies had only ever heard of the "Reverse Proxy", even if they didn't call it that. The "Reverse Proxy" sat in front of the company's internet web presence, providing additional performance, scalability, and reliability for all the requests to the corporate web site from users all over the internet.

As the web grew, companies began to see the need to protect users from threats on the web as well as implement policy around acceptable web usage. The proxy that the end-user connects to with their browser to access the internet, is the "Forward Proxy". Unfortunately the implementation of "Forward Proxies" in many organizations has also lead to the rise of many illicit websites on proxy avoidance. A sophisticated proxy should be able to detect proxy avoidance techniques to keep corporate guidelines and policy intact.

There are special variations on both forward and reverse proxies, far too many for discussion in this short post, but we'll address some special implementations in separate future posts.