What is a Proxy?
Proxies, told as a story about the runner who goes to market on your behalf.
Go to market yourself and everyone sees your face.The whole market knows who bought what.
Send a runner, and the market sees only the runner.My face never leaves the castle.
A proxy is the runner who goes in your place.The whole castle sends the same runner, who keeps popular items in a basket and steers clear of bad alleys.
There's a runner the other way too — the receptionist.Townsfolk can't walk into the castle; they hand notes to the receptionist, who spreads them across free counters and never reveals the layout. The note checker stands here too.
The runner can read every note.Who you send is everything. A sealed note (HTTPS) can't be read, but the runner still knows where it's going. And when the runner is sick, everything stops.
A proxy = the runner who goes in your place. The market sees only the runner, who carries a basket and a list of alleys.
A forward proxy is the castle's runner; a reverse proxy is the receptionist at the counter. The checkpoint (SWG) is a runner with a rulebook. Squid, nginx, HAProxy, Cloudflare.
When grown-ups say it
- Forward proxy
- The castle's runner. Goes out on my behalf. The market never sees my face.
- Reverse proxy
- The receptionist. Passes notes inward for the town, hiding the castle's layout.
- Cache
- The basket. Popular items kept ready — handed over without a trip to market.
- Load balancing
- Spreading notes to free counters. The receptionist shares work across counters 1, 2 and 3.
- IP masking
- The runner's face instead of mine. Outside sees only the runner's address. → like the sealed tunnel, minus the seal
- Transparent proxy
- The runner nobody asked for. The castle routes everyone through the runner automatically, unnoticed.
- TLS termination
- The receptionist breaks the seal. The receptionist opens sealed notes and hands them in unsealed. → breaking seals
- SWG
- A runner with a rulebook. The runner plus checkpoint rules. → the checkpoint to town