Inbound and Outbound on Firewall Rules – Forward and Reverse Proxies
Inbound only refers to the INITIATOR of the connection. As does OUTBOUND.
So – when we say we are opening up port 443 outbound – we are essentially saying that the connection will be initiated by the internal resource.
Reverse Proxy Servers
A Reverse Proxy is a server, much like a webs server. It handles requests from the client – on behalf of a backend server (or group of servers). It effectively HIDES the backend server.
Can it handle requests initiated by backend servers?
Yes – a reverse proxy can be designed to also handle requests initiated by the backend servers. This is possible only if the proxy has a persistent connection open to the client – so this is the primary feature that needs to be built in.
Forward Proxy Servers
A forward proxy simply intercepts requests from your laptop (the client) to an outbound server.
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