Networking: Proxy Vocabulary

Web development Jul 13, 2023

Forward Proxy = Tunneling Proxy = Gateway

Meaning: A server that forward the request to the destination server
Use case: logging, content filtering, caching, access some banned web
Risk: password or credential stolen e.g. cookies and token, eavesdropping

Reverse Proxy = Surrogate

Meaning: Proxy on the server side in front of many internal server, i.e. the true server that the content is stored.
Use case: protect server, load balancer, compression, caching
Note: The word ‘reverse’ is in the sense of backward direction from server to the user

Open Proxy

Proxy that is accessible by the internet

Anonymous Proxy

Proxy that hide request ip

Transparent Proxy

Proxy that pass anything unmodified including your ip.
Note (1): knowing ip makes server able to cache content for the same user
Note (2): This term can have negative meaning. In a sense that a user don’t know there is a proxy in between because the proxy is ‘transparent’ passing anything as if it’s not here, and the proxy is trying to steal something from the user.

In this case, such proxy is called
Inline proxy=Intercepting proxy=Forced proxy