Joe Touch wrote:
> What concerns me about the above is the use of "intent"
> in a definition. There must be some objective metric.
> Management control, service agreeements, etc. aren't
> useful objective metrics.
Noted.
The problem being that real life is perhaps a bit to blurred to be able
to clearly define what is reverse with a "reverse proxy", and why that
makes it a "reverse proxy" as opposed to a "non-revers proxy" without
bringing such terms into the definition.
I think of it as a distinction where the proxy is deployed and for what
purpose. Other see it as a difference in technical details of how the
request looks like when received by the proxy, which may classify TCP
hijacking proxies as being reverse proxies, and I stronly object to
that.
> Is there any definition of a reverse proxy that is objective?
> (and can distinguish it completely from a non-reverse proxy cache?)
What about this:
A reverse proxy is officially published (in DNS and/or by official IP
address) as the origin server and forwards received request towards the
real origin server. Common usage is relaying requests through a server
side firewall or providing alternate access points where traffic is
relayed through private network(s).
Leave out the common use examples if you like, but I think they help to
clarify the intent of the definition.
Why I say towards and not to is because it may be deployed in several
layers in some extreme cases. If the examples is left out then the
definition better reads to and not towards to remove some ambuigity
where the term may be applied.
-- Henrik Nordstrom
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 18 2004 - 11:21:27 MST