A web server is the software that answers when your browser asks for a webpage. Understanding how it listens, processes, and responds reveals the simple mechanism behind every website you've ever visited.
Application servers run your code, enforce your business rules, and generate every dynamic response you see online. They're the brain behind every login, search, and transaction.
A reverse proxy intercepts every request to your servers, impersonating them so convincingly that clients never know the real servers exist. Here's why that deception is the foundation of modern web architecture.
A forward proxy speaks to the Internet on your behalf, hiding your identity from the world—but seeing everything you do. Understanding this tradeoff is key to using proxies wisely.
A CDN is a network of servers that wait near your users, holding copies of your content, ready to respond before the request even finishes traveling. Here's why that changes everything.
A single server can fail. A thousand servers behind a load balancer means something is always alive. How load balancers turn mortality into immortality.
Every request you don't make is infinitely fast. Caching is how you stop rebuilding what already exists—but knowing when to let go of the old is harder than it sounds.
HTTP was designed to forget you. Cookies are the hack that taught it to remember—enabling logins, shopping carts, and unfortunately, surveillance.
HTTP forgets you after every request. Sessions are how web applications remember who you are—and why protecting that memory matters.
Why your code's physical location matters. Edge computing puts computation where your users are—because even light isn't fast enough to make distance irrelevant.
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