Interview Bootcamp
Vote

0% completed

​

Introduction to API Gateway

An API Gateway is a server-side architectural component that acts as an intermediary between clients and backend services.

Clients here means web browsers, mobile apps, or other services. Backend means your microservices and APIs.

Its main purpose is to provide a single entry point for external consumers to access the backend system. It receives a client request, forwards it to the appropriate microservice, and returns that service's response to the client.

Along the way it takes on jobs that would otherwise be repeated in every service: routing, authentication, rate limiting

.....

.....

.....

Like the course? Get enrolled and start learning!
Syed Mohammad Hassan

Syed Mohammad Hassan

· 4 months ago

My understanding is that:

A load balancer operates at the network level. Its only job is to distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed. It knows nothing about your API. it just sees "a request came in, which server should get it?" It uses strategies like round-robin, least-connections, or IP hashing.

An API gateway operates at the application level. It understands your API. It handles things like authentication/authorization, rate limiting, request routing to the correct microservice, SSL termination, request transformation, logging, and caching. Think of it as the "smart front door" for your API.

Show 1 reply
Sandeep Verma

Sandeep Verma

· 2 years ago

In some design there is gateway before API gateway . API gateway also has capability to load balance. What is recommended? .

Show 3 replies