forwardserves

Forwardserves is a term used in some discussions of distributed systems to describe a class of middleware that accepts client requests and forwards them to one or more backend services according to predefined routing policies. The concept emphasizes the act of forwarding as a primary function, often in conjunction with request routing, aggregation, and protocol translation.

In typical deployments, a forwardserve sits at the edge of a system or within a service mesh API gateway. It relies on a service registry or discovery mechanism to locate backend services and a policy engine to determine routing rules, load balancing, retries, and timeouts. Forwardserves may also perform request aggregation, combining data from multiple backends into a single response, or they may forward to parallel backends to reduce latency. They commonly support HTTP and other application protocols, with extensions for authentication, authorization, and observability.

Use cases for forwardserves include API gateways that route and compose responses for client applications, multi-cloud or hybrid deployments that route to diverse backends, and orchestration scenarios where a single entry point coordinates multiple microservices. Benefits can include decoupling of clients from backend implementations, improved routing flexibility, and centralized policy enforcement. Drawbacks include added network hops, potential latency, increased operational complexity, and the need for careful consistency and security controls.

Forwardserves are related to, but distinct from, reverse proxies, API gateways, and service meshes. The term is not universally standardized and can be used variably to describe different forwarding-focused capabilities within broader gateway or mesh architectures.