Does reverse proxying the WebSockets servers make sense from scaling perspective?

Question

I have reverse proxy and multiple WebSocket servers behind it. I'm confused whether it makes any sense from scaling perspective, because I see it like that:

1. The WebSocket server A has 30,000 active connections
2. The WebSocket server B has 20,000 active connections

All connections are through reversed proxy. So I guess that my proxy has 50,000 active connections, because it proxies every of them to appropriate WebSocket server (or maybe it doesnt work like that? I'm not sure)

So does it make sense to reverse proxy the WebSocket servers only from scaling and performance perspective?

Answer 1

Scaling, yes. Manageability, yes. Fault tolerance/high availability - mostly yes. It adds nothing in terms of performance - indeed its adding latency. Significantly it does add security in isolating your origin servers from attacks targeting the TCP/IP stack.

(Yes, there will be a 1:1 relationship between connections to the proxy and to the origin server)