Nginx, Edge, and API Gateway

Nginx and edge interviews cover operating traffic at the boundary: reverse proxy basics, CDN caching, redirects, edge functions, WAF policy, and centralized API gateway controls.

Child sections: Nginx basics, edge concerns, and API gateway operations.

On interviews: describe how you would serve static assets, terminate TLS, cache API responses safely, and route tenants at the edge without hiding service ownership.

Common pitfalls: caching authenticated responses, edge logic that duplicates authorization, and WAF rules that block legitimate traffic without observability.

The trade-off is balancing simplicity, performance, safety, and operability — name which axis you optimized and what cost you accepted.

Checklist:

• Separate static edge delivery from dynamic upstream routing.
• Apply cache-control and purge strategy deliberately.
• Use WAF and rate limits as one defense layer.
• Keep authorization in services; delegate auth context at gateway.