what is the difference between proxy server and normal server?

Question

Responsibility of a server is to get request and giving appropriate response to the request. Then, what is the responsibility of a proxy server? Is there any relationship between server and proxy server(i.e, if server gets overloaded, then proxy server will pretend like a server)? If it is not true, then what is the solution when the server is getting overloaded?

Answer 1

The responsibility of a proxy server is to contact a server on your behalf, request an action and pass the response back to you.

This is applicable, for example, when there is no possibility to establish direct connection with server.

Answer 2

In general Serge's answer is correct and succinct, and I upvoted it accordingly.

To expand on Serge's definition a bit... because your question talks about the relationship between servers, it sounds like you might be thinking about a category of proxy server called a reverse proxy.

First let's quickly define both forward and reverse proxies. Generally speaking, when using "forward" proxies, the client knows about the target server, and asks the proxy server to forward the request to that known server. In contrast, when using a "reverse" proxy, the client does not know what the target server is. The reverse proxy is set up to invisibly forward the request to a behind-the-scenes server, which does the actual work, and the reverse proxy passes along the response.

Reverse proxies are very commonly used, for a variety of reasons:

1. Hiding the actual servers from direct Internet access improves your security.
2. You can "terminate" SSL at the proxy, which means decrypting the request at that point, so the web servers don't have to perform that computationally expensive task.
3. The proxy can act as a "load balancer", distributing requests among a pool of servers doing the work, so your service can scale better.
4. You can cache content at the proxy, greatly speeding up responses to duplicate requests.
5. You can serve static content very fast, but still mix in dynamically-generated content that is produced by application servers.

Hopefully this clarifies the relationship between "servers" and "proxy servers".

Answer 3

As the proxy server and normal server are just computers, there is no difference between them but the difference is in the functions they offer. Basically a proxy server works as a mediator between clients and requested server while a normal server is pretty direct. When you view a site from a normal server, your IP address is recognized and your location can be easily identified. On the other side when you go through a proxy server, your IP address is disguised or changed so that you become mysterious and for a while faint that is illegal in most cases.