Client IP through Reverse Proxy?

Blaster99

I'm using Apache do to reverse proxy and virtual hosting, so the apache server is forwarding requests to the machines running the actual web apps based on the hostname in the request. Nothing strange there. But sometimes in the web apps I need the IP address of the client in order to authenticate it. I'm obviously getting the IP address of the proxy in the apps. Is there any way around this?

niallb

Have you tried using squid instead of apache on the forwarding machine?

Do your webapps know that they are being reached by reverse-proxy?
Perhaps adding no-cache, pragma headers to their generated files might help.

Do you have the option of changing your authentication mechanism?

Squid would allow you cover this requirement using an IP based
access control list, and only forward requests if they passed.
Then you could confirm the rest of your authentication requirements
on the backend server. (This obviously works best if your backend server is only listening to your proxies, but I assume this is the case?)

Any useful ideas there?

NiallB

dahamsta

Sorry to go off-topic almost immediately, but I've been asked by a client to reverse proxy some of his machines and I've been looking into Apache (not a big fan of Squid). How do you find it? Have you benchmarked it against Squid, and if so how did it perform?

adam