Standard proxy analysis

To understand benefits of reverse proxy technology, user has to understand how standard proxy works. And to understand how standard proxy works, some general stuff about client - server method has to be learned.

We have client, which will be in our example a web browser. And we have service server, which will be a web server (serving HTTP content). When we visit a web page hosted by the server, a connection is created between client and server:

Thus, server is capable of recording our IP (due to direct connection). If we want to hide our IP, we use so called "proxy" between our browser client and web server.

Connection is first established from our browser client to the proxy:

At this point, proxy can get information about our IP. But then proxy establish its own connection to the web server:

And so the web server gets IP of the proxy instead of our real IP. But everything is not so cool, if there is proxy is behind NAT device. You can read more about it here.