if i understand correctly, unless i employ some sort of certificate replacement, forward web proxies like squid connect web browsers to web servers and forward encrypted network traffic between them. the proxy cant "understand" the traffic. so it cant cache requests or data and cant inspect the data for malware. in our era where almost 100% of the web traffic is encrypted, what good is a forward http proxy ? why would i want to use it in my network ? how can it benefit me ?
and if i understand correctly, reverse web proxies serve the certificate on behalf of the web server and the traffic between the proxy and the web server is plain text http traffic. in this case the proxy server can analyze and cache data.
will it be correct to state that, in our ssl era, forward web proxies are totally useless while reverse web proxies are very useful ?