Poll: Are client web requests sent to upstream servers or downstream servers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30639265

by Jupe • 4 years ago

2 2 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

dpryden• 4 years ago

This is similar to the old debate about the meaning of "frontend" and "backend". I maintain that something cannot be a "frontend" or a "backend" in isolation, it can only be a frontend or a backend to some other system. In a stack with many layers, (nearly) every layer is a frontend to one thing and a backend to another.

That said, I think I tend to use "upstream" in a similar sense to how package maintainers talk about packages: "upstream" is the source (where the thing originally came from) and "downstream" is the sink (where I will send it to). This implies that "upstream" for a request is "downstream" for a response, and vice versa. I don't know if that's necessarily correct usage, but that's how I've done it.

phillipseamore• 4 years ago

nginx does not indicate the opposite. In nginx upstream refers to the next source/server it should pass the request on to.

E.g. nginx receives a request and passes it on to the configured upstream, the application server, before receiving a response that is passed downstream to the UA.

Poll: Are client web requests sent to upstream servers or downstream servers?

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