ELI5: What is reverse proxy and how it works?

Imagine you want to order a pizza from "Pizza Palace" but don't want them to know your exact address.

Think of a reverse proxy like your apartment building's doorman.

• You call the doorman (the reverse proxy) and tell them you want a pizza from Pizza Palace.
• The doorman calls Pizza Palace (the server hosting the pizza website/ordering system) and places the order on your behalf, but gives Pizza Palace the doorman's address, not yours.
• Pizza Palace delivers the pizza to the doorman.
• The doorman then brings the pizza to your apartment.

• Hid your address: Pizza Palace doesn't know your real address, protecting your privacy. This is like hiding the server's IP address.
• Added security: The doorman can check the pizza box for tampering before giving it to you. This is like filtering out bad traffic and attacks before they reach the server.
• Sped things up: The doorman might keep popular pizzas warm and ready. If you order one of those, you get it faster! This is like caching content to improve performance.
• Balanced the load: If too many people order pizza at once, the doorman can split the orders between different pizza places to avoid overwhelming any single place. This is like load balancing, distributing traffic across multiple servers.