Proxies: Forward and Reverse

A proxy server is an intermediate device which sits between two objects, a common example is clients and a single or set of resources.

There are many different types of proxies but the ones I want to talk about here are forward and reverse proxies:
Forward Proxy:
A forward proxy is used to grant access to a collection of clients to a resource, for example the Internet. A client sends the request to the proxy server naming the destination server, so the client much be configured to know about the proxy in place. The proxy then requests the content from the destination server and returns it to the client.

Reverse Proxy:
A reverse proxy appears to the client as an ordinary server, there is no special configuration required on the client. The reverse proxy receives the request from the client and then decides where to send the request to, usually within a pool of resources, it returns the content as though it was the destination server. An example of a reverse proxy would be as a load balancer for a pool of resources.