Is reverse proxy actually needed on ASP.NET core? : <p>We're wondering if reverse proxy is actually required for most use cases and would appreciate additional information.</p>

<p>The Kerstel/Nginx documentation claims:
"Kestrel is great for serving dynamic content from ASP.NET Core. However, the web serving capabilities aren't as feature rich as servers such as IIS, Apache, or Nginx. A reverse proxy server can offload work such as serving static content, caching requests, compressing requests, and HTTPS termination from the HTTP server. A reverse proxy server may reside on a dedicated machine or may be deployed alongside an HTTP server."
<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy/linux-nginx?view=aspnetcore-2.2" rel="noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/host-and-deploy/linux-nginx?view=aspnetcore-2.2</a></p>

<p>Could anyone please share some insights if this is actually relevant nowadays?</p>

<p>On our use case, we use Docker instances with external load balancing (AWS ALB).
Each docker instance has both Nginx and our ASP.NET Core application running.
We couldn't figure out the exact benefits of using Nginx.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Serving static content
As we're using an external CRN (AWS CloudFront), I assume static caching doesn't really have any actual benefits, does it?</p></li>
<li><p>Caching requests
I believe this is the same as serving static content, as dynamic content isn't cached on most scenarios (on our use case - all scenarios).</p></li>
<li><p>Compressing requests
ASP.NET Core has a response compression middleware, however - it claims "The performance of the middleware probably won't match that of the server modules. HTTP.sys server server and Kestrel server don't currently offer built-in compression support.".
Perhaps some benchmarks could be created to validate this claim.
<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/performance/response-compression?view=aspnetcore-2.2" rel="noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/performance/response-compression?view=aspnetcore-2.2</a></p></li>
<li><p>HTTPS termination from the HTTP server
I assume most clients having load balancers can skip this part, as HTTPS termination can be done on the load balancer if needed.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks!
Effy</p>
