Generals
Traditional - WebServing, or API
| Architectural Role | Primary Focus & Layer | When to Choose | Top Candidates & Tools | Key Concepts & Recommended Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Load Balancer | Layer 4 / Layer 7: High availability, horizontal scaling, health checks, and equal traffic distribution across identical servers. | You need fault tolerance, failover, and multi-instance distribution for a single service tier. | AWS ALB/NLB, HAProxy, Cloudflare LB, F5 BIG-IP | β’ L4 vs L7 Load Balancing β’ HAProxy Architecture Guide β’ AWS ELB Deep Dive |
| Reverse Proxy | Layer 7: Edge protection, origin IP masking, SSL termination, static content caching, and URL rewriting. | You need to shield backend monoliths/servers, terminate TLS centrally, or cache static assets at the edge. | NGINX, Caddy, Traefik, HAProxy | β’ NGINX Reverse Proxy Guide β’ ByteByteGo: Reverse Proxy Basics β’ Cloudflare Edge Architecture |
| API Gateway | Layer 7: API governance, authentication (JWT/OAuth), rate limiting, request transformation, and microservice routing. | You need to expose diverse backend microservices to public web/mobile clients with unified security and metering. | Kong Gateway, Apache APISIX, AWS API Gateway, Envoy, Tyk, KrakenD | β’ Microservices API Gateway Pattern (Chris Richardson) β’ API7 APISIX Architecture Docs β’ Kong API Gateway Fundamentals |
AI Modeling in 2026, AI-Native Gateway, MCP Routers or Agentic BFFs
| 2026 Architectural Layer | Core Purpose & Native Mechanics | Problem Solved | Modern Candidates & Native Tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI Gateway / LLM Proxy | Token-aware rate limiting (TPM vs. RPS), semantic caching via vector embeddings, model fallback chains, and prompt guardrails. | Eliminates cost spikes from heavy prompts, guards against provider outages, and reduces latency from seconds to milliseconds on similar queries. | Envoy AI Gateway, Apache APISIX (AI Proxy), Gloo AI Gateway, Portkey, LiteLLM |
| MCP Gateway (Agent Tool Proxy) | Multiplexes Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool servers, translates SSE/JSON-RPC streams, and enforces OAuth & tool-level access policies. | Enables AI agents to dynamically discover and execute microservice tools securely without exposing direct backend network access. | Envoy MCP Gateway, APISIX MCP Bridge, Tailscale Agent Mesh |
| Agentic BFF (Backend For Frontend) | Coordinates bi-directional client streaming (SSE/WebSockets), UI component hydration, and agent session state. | Decouples long-lived LLM streams and non-deterministic agent loops from core client rendering code. | Next.js AI SDK Actions, FastAPI Agent BFF, GraphQL Subscriptions |
| Resilient AI Microservices | Wraps external model calls in strict circuit breakers and applies the Saga pattern for compensating actions when multi-step agent runs fail. | Prevents cascading system crashes when LLM providers lag or when an autonomous agent fails midway through a sequence. | Resilience4j, Temporal, Dapr, LangGraph / CrewAI |
Repositories
- awesome-webservers: a collection of one-liner server
- web-servers.md : Each of these commands will run an ad hoc http static server in your current (or specified) directory
- moz://a SSL Configuration Generator : SSL Generation for multiple webserver π (Recommended)
Documentations
- ASGI: Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface is a spiritual successor to WSGI, intended to provide a standard interface between async-capable Python web servers, frameworks, and applications.
- WSGI: the Web Server Gateway Interface
- Enable CORS: enable cross-origin resource sharing
Articles
- Linkedin - My βOpinionatedβ Cloud Native Journey: Web Servers, Service Proxies, API Gateways, Service Meshes π (Recommended)
- Microservice.io - Why to choose API Gateway - Architecture Design π (Recommended)
- api7.ai - API Gateway vs Reverse Proxy: Differences and Use Cases
- Hackernoon - Choosing the Right Proxy: Forward Proxy vs. Reverse Proxy vs. API Gateway
- F5 - Building Microservices: Using an API Gateway π (Recommended)
- AWS - Guidance for Agentic AI Operational Foundations on AWS π (Recommended)
- Medium - Agentic AI Gateway: The Proven Architecture Pattern for Enterprise GenAI Security and Governance π (Recommended)
Topics
Tool Collections (Curious Version π)
API Gateway
- Apache APISIX: The Cloud-Native API Gateway
- easegress: A Cloud Native traffic orchestration system
- Kong: API gateway built for hybrid and multi-cloud, optimized for microservices and distributed architectures π (Recommended)
- lura: Ultra performant API Gateway with middlewares
- tyk: Open Source API Gateway written in Go, supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols
WebServer
- IIS: Window webserver
Tool Collections
WebServer
- Caddy server: Caddy is a powerful, extensible platform to serve your sites, services, and apps, written in Go π (Recommended)
- HAProxy : HAProxy is a free, very fast and reliable reverse-proxy offeringΒ high availability,Β load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications π (Recommended)
- httpd - Apache2 : The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows.
- Nginx: nginx is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server. π (Recommended - Most powerful)
- Tomcat: an open source implementation of the JSP Specifications π (Recommended)
- Traefik : Traefik is anΒ open-source Edge RouterΒ that makes publishing your services a fun and easy experience π (Recommended)