Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server, Third Edition

By : Clement Nedelcu
Book Image

Nginx HTTP Server, Third Edition

By: Clement Nedelcu

Overview of this book

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as the primary objective. With the advent of high speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free, open source solution will either come as a full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed. This book is a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different ways that correspond to actual production situations: as a standalone server, as a reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, this complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes. This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For beginners, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules so it does exactly what you need quickly and securely. For more experienced administrators, this book provides different approaches that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. Nginx can be employed in many situations, whether you are looking to construct an entirely new web-serving architecture or simply want to integrate an efficient tool to optimize your site loading speeds.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Nginx HTTP Server Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Improving the reverse proxy architecture


There are a few more additional steps that you may be interested in if you want to perfect your reverse proxy architecture. Three main issues are discussed here: the issue of IP addresses and how to ensure that the backend server retrieves the correct one, how to handle HTTPS requests with such a setup, and finally, a quick word about server control panels (cPanel, Plesk, and others).

Forwarding the correct IP address

Nowadays, a good portion of websites make use of the visitor's IP address for all kinds of reasons:

  • Storing the IP address of a visitor posting a comment on a blog or a discussion forum

  • Geo-targeted advertising or other services

  • Limiting services to specific IP address ranges

Therefore, it is important for those websites to ensure that the web server correctly receives the IP address of the visitor.

As explained before, since Apache, or more generally the backend server, uses the IP address of the socket it communicates with, the IP that will...