Proxy naming

I had an off-line discussion with Shel, and came up with a naming
scheme that would reduce confusion about conventional proxies, and
proxies that act as servers ("reverse proxies", as I called them):
client proxy and server proxy, respectively.

Since the conventional proxies are for clients to get through their
firewall (or just get faster response times and save bandwidth), they
are "client side" proxies.  The clients know that they are talking to
a proxy, and the protocol is slightly different for the communication
between a client and a client proxy (as specified in the HTTP draft).

A "server proxy" is more of a proxy to a server -- to clients it
appears as a normal server.  Also, the protocol between a client and a
server proxy is stock HTTP, just like for any communication between a
client and a server.  The fact that the server is actually a server
proxy is hidden from the client.

Roy, would you consider putting these definitions into the spec, and
making a difference between them, when applicable?

Cheers,
--
Ari Luotonen				ari@netscape.com
Netscape Communications Corp.		http://home.netscape.com/people/ari/
501 East Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA		Netscape Server Development Team

Received on Monday, 2 October 1995 18:53:39 UTC