Apache Traffic Server
Apache Traffic Server is a high-performance, modular HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 proxy caching server that improves web application delivery and scalability. It functions as a forward proxy, reverse proxy, load balancer, and content cache to accelerate content delivery and reduce origin server load. Originally developed by Yahoo! and now an Apache Software Foundation project, it's designed for handling massive traffic volumes with low latency.
Developers should use Apache Traffic Server when building high-traffic web applications that require efficient content caching, load balancing, or HTTP request/response manipulation at scale. It's particularly valuable for CDN implementations, API gateway deployments, and large-scale web services where performance optimization and origin server protection are critical. The extensible plugin architecture also makes it suitable for custom traffic routing and security filtering needs.