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I have very recently started development on a multiplayer browser game that will use nowjs to synchronize player states from the server state. I am new to server-side development (so many of the things I'm saying are probably being said incorrectly), and while I understand how node.js works on its own I have seen discussions about proxying HTTP requests through another server technology (a la NGinx or Apache) for efficiency.

I don't understand why it would be beneficial to do so, even though I've seen plenty of explanations of how to do so. My current plan is to have the game's website and info on the same server as the game itself, so if there is any gain from proxying node I'd love to know why.

Piers Mana
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In the context of your question it seems you are looking for an answer on the benefits of implementing a reverse proxy in front of your node.js webserver. In summary, a reverse proxy (depending on implementation) can provide the following features out of the box:

  • Load balancing
  • Caching of static content
  • Failover
  • Compression of responses (e.g gzip)
  • SSL support

All these features are cross-cutting concerns that you should not need to accommodate in your application tier/code. By implementing these features within the proxy it allows you to focus on developing the code for your application and leaves the web server to do what it's good at, serving the HTTP requests for your application.

nginx appears to be a common choice in a reverse proxy/node configuration and if you take a look at the modules reference you should get a feel for what features the proxy can provide.

Pero P.
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  • Thank you for the links and terms, nginx is the one I've been seeing the most about in guides and such. Out-of-the-box functionality is very good for a server beginner! – Piers Mana Feb 09 '12 at 21:21
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When you say "through another technology" I assume you mean through a dedicated web server such as NGinx or Apache.

The reason you do that is b/c in a production environment there are a number of considerations you don't want your application to have to do on its own. Caching, domain (or sub-domain) mapping, perhaps security, SSL, load balancing, and serving static files to name a few.

The web servers are already built to do all those things for you, and so they can handle them and then pass only the requests on to your app that actually need to be handled by your app. They're also optimized for doing those things and will probably do them as well or better than the average developer can.

Hope that helps.

Paul
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  • You assumption is correct, I do mean through something like Apache. I'll edit the question to highlight that. I thought that Node.js could handle serving files, etc. just fine on its own already, or is that where the optimization comes in? – Piers Mana Feb 09 '12 at 20:56
  • It can handle it, certainly. It's just a question of efficiency. As an example, if you want to cache responses for static files, you have to implement that yourself in node; where most dedicated web servers will have settings you can flip for that. – Paul Feb 09 '12 at 20:58
  • Cool, cool cool cool. So any of the constant traffic coming from nowjs (which I believe is TCP?) won't be slowed down by adding that proxy layer? – Piers Mana Feb 09 '12 at 21:01
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    nowjs can be configured to be either TCP or HTTP. If your web server is listening only on port 80/443, and your nowjs is configured to do TCP over some other port, then it'll never even hit it. But you'll still get the benefit of having any web pages / resources going through that web server – Paul Feb 09 '12 at 21:21
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Another issue that people haven't added in here is that with a front-end proxy, when you need to take your service down for maintenance (or even just restart it), nginx can serve up a pretty "YourCompanyName is currently under maintenance" page, making for a much more pleasant user experience.

Matt Sergeant
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