What is a reverse proxy and what are its benefits?

Reverse proxy sits in front of servers, forwarding client requests. Benefits: Load balancing (distribute traffic), SSL termination (offload encryption), Caching (reduce backend load), Security (hide server details, DDoS protection, WAF), Compression (reduce bandwidth), Request routing (path-based to different services), Rate limiting. Examples: Nginx, HAProxy, Traefik. Different from forward proxy which acts on behalf of clients. Essential for microservices architectures.