Load Balancer vs Reverse Proxy (Explained by Example)

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In this video we will discuss the difference between Reverse proxy and load balancer. Some of you guys asked this question and I thought its appropriate to make a video.

So Personally id like to think of a Load balancer as one of the applications of a reverse proxy. It is a special case of a reverse proxy. Lets us define what a reverse proxy is first. To define load balancer we need to first define what a reverse proxy is. And to define reverse proxy, we need to know what a proxy is! So lets start with a proxy

A proxy is a piece of software that makes request to a server in place of the client. Servers don’t know who are the client.

Reverse proxy is the reverse! The client doesn’t know which server it is connected to. I recommend checking out the video of proxy vs reverse proxy to learn more.

A Load balancer is a special case of a reverse proxy. Reverse proxy doesn’t have to be a load balancer. Load balancers must have two or more servers on the backend to balance the load, reverse proxy doesn’t have to. Reverse proxy can be optimized to perform the following:

1. Caching web acceleration
2. Canary deployment
3. Security against servers
4. Anonymous
5. Single entry URL
6. Load balancing




Stay Awesome!
Hussein