A server that sits in front of web servers and forwards requests to them, providing load balancing and security. Like a receptionist who directs visitors to the right department.
Nginx acts as a reverse proxy, distributing incoming website traffic across multiple servers and hiding their actual locations for security.
A reverse proxy is commonly delivered as an L7 (HTTP/HTTPS) load balancer or edge proxy. Cloud services like ALB/App Gateway/HTTP(S) LB/OCI LB can route requests to backends, terminate TLS, apply routing rules, and integrate with WAF/CDN for security and performance.