NGINX Explained: 6 Roles You MUST Know 🚀 | NGINX Interview #shorts

Six Roles of NGINX

NGINX can perform several roles in an application architecture:

1. Reverse proxy: Sits between clients and a backend application, such as a Spring Boot service, and forwards requests. Clients access NGINX’s public URL rather than connecting directly to the backend. This can help keep backend addresses private and provide a place to apply controls such as IP allowlisting, rate limiting, and basic authentication.

2. HTTP web server: Serves static files—such as HTML pages, CSS, and images—directly to clients without sending those requests to the backend.

3. Content cache: Stores frequently requested content, such as images, so repeat requests can be served from the cache rather than repeatedly reaching the backend.

4. Load balancer: Distributes incoming requests across multiple application servers to handle traffic.

5. TCP/UDP proxy: Proxies traffic over TCP or UDP, in addition to HTTP. For example, NGINX can sit between a Spring Boot application and a MySQL server.

6. Mail proxy: Proxies mail protocols such as SMTP and POP3.

Source

The explanation is narrated by a single presenter in a video from The Curious Coder.