What is TLS?

TLS, or Transport layer security, is a more modern version of the original SSL (Secure Socket Layer). It’s a protocol that’s part of the network stack responsible for securing the connection between client and server. TLS is commonly used in conjunction with HTTP to form HTTPS, the secure and encrypted form of HTTP.

In this blog post we’re exploring some aspects of Varnish Enterprise that enable what it is best known for: excellent performance. When we talk about the performance of caching servers, what do we mean?

In this week’s episode of Two-Minute Tech Tuesday, we'll talk about Hitch. Hitch is an open-source TLS proxy that Varnish develops and maintains. It can be used to terminate TLS, which is especially useful if you're using Varnish Cache.

In this week’s episode of Two-Minute Tech Tuesday, we'll talk about the PROXY protocol. The PROXY protocol transports client connection information across multiple proxy servers. It's used by Varnish to facilitate TLS termination. It's not a replacement for HTTP, in fact it operates on a different layer of the network stack, and comes as a preamble that is prepended to request data.