Reverse Proxies
A reverse proxy is a gateway for servers, and enables one web server
to provide content from another transparently. As with a standard
proxy, a reverse proxy may serve to improve performance of the web by
caching; this is a simple way to mirror a website. But the most common
reason to run a reverse proxy is to enable controlled access from the
Web at large to servers behind a firewall.
The proxied server may be a webserver itself, or it may be an
application server using a different protocol, or an application
server with just rudimentary HTTP that needs to be shielded from
the web at large. Since 2004, reverse proxying has been the preferred
method of deploying JAVA/Tomcat applications on the Web, replacing
the old mod_jk (itself a special-purpose reverse proxy module).
