What is Nginx?
Nginx (pronounced "engine-x") is a high-performance web server and reverse proxy known for its efficiency in handling concurrent connections. It uses an event-driven, non-blocking architecture that excels at serving static content and load balancing.
How Does Nginx Work?
Created in 2004 to solve the C10K problem (handling 10,000 simultaneous connections), Nginx uses an asynchronous event-driven approach instead of creating a new process per connection. This makes it exceptionally memory-efficient and capable of handling massive traffic with minimal resources.
Nginx is commonly used as a reverse proxy in front of application servers, a load balancer distributing traffic across multiple backends, and a static file server. Many modern deployments use Nginx alongside Apache or application servers like Node.js, where Nginx handles static assets and SSL termination while forwarding dynamic requests to the backend.