Proxies and API Gateways

Introduction

In the field of web architecture, proxies and API gateways are essential for regulating and optimizing data flow between clients and servers. Understanding these components is critical for improving security, performance, and communication. This blog examines the ideas, kinds, and applications of proxies and API gateways, giving a thorough overview for both developers and system administrators.

Proxy Server

 A proxy server acts as an intermediary between a client and a backend server. It performs various functions to manage and filter requests, enhance performance, and secure communications.

  1. Filter Requests: These requests look up each address in its database of approved and forbidden sites. It can either block or allow requests based on this database, which can be customized by a system administrator.
  2. Log Requests: These requests are for monitoring and analysis.
  3. Requests can be transformed using methods such as encryption and compression.
  4. Cache: A caching proxy server boosts web performance by caching frequently accessed pages, eliminating the need for repeated internet queries.
  5. Batch Requests: They can combine several requests to improve efficiency.
  6. Collapsed Forwarding: This technique sends numerous client requests with the same URI to the backend server, reducing redundant data readings.
  7. Security: Proxy servers enhance security through network address translation, making individual users and computers anonymous. This protects against hackers and unauthorized access.

Types of Proxy Servers

These can be located anywhere between the client and the server or there. Here are the primary types:

1. Open Proxy.

An open proxy is accessible to any Internet user. Unlike closed proxies, which serve a specific networking group, open proxies allow any user to access their forwarding services. While this can help cut and control bandwidth, it also poses security problems.

2. Reverse Proxy

A reverse proxy gets resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers and returns them to the client as if they had come from the proxy server. It is often located behind a firewall in a private network, routing client requests to the relevant backend servers.

  1. Load Balancing: Serves as a traffic cop, dividing client requests among different servers to maximize speed and capacity utilization. If one of the servers fails, traffic is routed to the other ones.
  2. Web Acceleration: Compresses data and caches frequently requested material to increase traffic flow. It can also handle SSL encryption, which takes this responsibility away from web servers.
  3. Security and Anonymity: Protects backend server identities and serves as a protection against security assaults. It allows multiple servers to be accessed from a single URL.

API Gateway

An API gateway is an important component in web architecture, managing and routing API calls between clients and backend services.

An API gateway is a layer 7 (HTTP) router that functions as a reverse proxy, accepting API calls, aggregating necessary services, and returning the appropriate result. And it simplifies the scaling and updating processes.
Common functions include authentication, routing, rate limiting, billing, monitoring, analytics, policies, alerts, and security.

1. Main Use Cases

  1. Authentication: It offloads the authentication process from backend services, reducing network latency.
  2. Load Balancing: efficiently handling requests and tracking request loads across service nodes.
  3. Service Discovery and Requests Dispatching: It simplifies communication between clients and microservices, aggregating responses from multiple services and give single result.
  4. Response Transformation: These responses are made according to client type.
  5. Circuit Breaker: Implements a circuit breaker pattern to handle partial failures, temporarily stopping requests to failing components until issues are resolved.

2. Pros and Cons

Benefits:

  • Relaxes clients from the complexities of microservices partitioning and service instance locations.
  • Provides optimal APIs for reducing the number of requests and roundtrips.
  • Simplifies client logic by centralizing calls to multiple services.
  • Enhances user experience.

Drawbacks:

  • Adds complexity as an additional component that needs development, deployment, and management.
  • May increase response time due to additional network hops.

Popular API gateway solutions include:

  • Microsoft API Management:
  • NGINX Plus:
  • Amazon API Gateway:

Conclusion

Understanding proxies and API gateways is critical to optimizing and protecting web connections. Proxy and API gateways are critical components of modern web design, whether they are used to improve performance through caching, balance loads, or secure API calls.

Author
Arun Goel
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