NGINX is a free, open source, high-performance HTTP web server that can perform the following functions:
- Reverse Proxy
- Load Balancer for HTTP, TCP and UDP Traffic;
- Mail Proxy Server.
NGINX is known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. Benchmarks have shown NGINX to out perform other lightweight web servers and proxies, even some that are also considered lightweight. ones.
Web Server
Nginx uses an asynchronous event-driven approach, rather than threads to handle requests. It can handle more than 10,000 simultaneous connections with a low memory footprint. It supports multiple Name- and IP address-based virtual servers.
Reverse Proxy
NGINX is generally deployed as a reverse proxy, not as a caching proxy (like Squid). The key advantage with NGINX is its nominal RAM and CPU usage under heavy load. Squid is best applied to cache dynamic content for applications that cannot do it themselves. NGINX (unlike Squid), supports WebSockets, HTTP/1.1 Upgrade (101 Switching Protocols), and HTTP/2 protocol.