What is NGINX?
NGINX is an open-source web server. When we talk about how the backend works, we can say how the server is a computer that runs an application that’s a hardware aspect of a server, but as software, the web server controls how users access the application. In this case, the application is the HTML file we created, but what is NGINX, and how does NGINX work?
As we’ve said before, NGINX is an open-source web server written in C and can also be used as a reverse proxy and a load balancer. It holds all the information about the HTML structure and what kind of styles are applied. So, the web server controls how users access the application through an HTTP request, and NGINX is known to handle more than 10,000 requests at once.
So, a lot of companies like Facebook, Google, and Linkedin are known to use NGINX as their web server because they have a lot of users trying to access their services at once. Another cool aspect of NGINX is that it works as a reverse proxy server which means a direct client’s request to the appropriate applications.
How does NGINX Work?
If a request comes into port 80, NGINX sends the request to the blog that you created. You can consider port numbers as actual ports where ships embark just like ships are allowed to embark at their designated ports, users can only access the server through the ports that are open, and the number 80 is the default or standard port of HTTP request just like a C port has a lot of ports available, a server can open multiple ports at the same time.
For example, you have our blog running on port 80, but you can also have project A running on port 3,000, and another project B running on port 5,000 and NGINX will figure out what kind of project the user trying to access and direct the request to relevant projects or appropriate applications.
Should You Use NGINX?
Surely, NGINX can be seen on many high-visibility sites like Netflix, and it gives us a clear picture of why one should use it and what problem NGINX trying to solve. There are also other popular web servers, and there are some arguments about which one is better, but we think that it is just a personal choice to make depending on your needs.