Grokking the System Design Interview

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Proxy vs. Reverse Proxy

Proxy and Reverse Proxy are both intermediary entities in a network that manage and redirect traffic, but they differ in terms of their operational setup and the direction in which they handle traffic.

Proxy (Forward Proxy)

  • Operational Direction: A Proxy, often referred to as a Forward Proxy, serves as an intermediary for requests from clients (like browsers) seeking resources from other servers. The clients connect to the proxy server, which then forwards the request to the destination server on behalf of the client.
  • Functionality:

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Divyanshu Varma

Divyanshu Varma

· a year ago

We skip forward proxies in backend-focused system designs because system design interviews focus on:

  • Backend architecture
  • Scalability, consistency, fault tolerance
  • Microservices, queues, storage

So we mostly diagram server-side architecture, and clients are treated as a black box.

However, API Gateway (and sometimes even the LB) is acting as a reverse proxy and we need it all the time in system design interviews. Just put a load balancer before it and put multiple instances of API gateway.

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