Reverse Proxy Server

2011.02.25

I just released a reverse proxy server on github:

https://github.com/ahabra/reverse-proxy

You can also just download the war file.

So what’s a Reverse Proxy Server: “a reverse proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers.” (wikipedia)

Suppose there is company or a country which blocks site a.com and that you want to go around that restriction. One way is to create a new site say b.com which is not blocked. Whenever a user visits b.com, their request will be directed to a.com, and the response is presented back to the end user. b.com is called a reverse proxy.

Apache already has a reverse proxy module, however, this module has to be enabled by the server administrator. I wanted something more flexible.

The reverse proxy presented here is just a WAR file which can be deployed to any Java servlet container like Tomcat.

This proxy is already in production helping users in two counties go around their governments restrictions.

I am aware of at least one similar project j2ep, however it seems that it has not been updated for several years.