SSL Termination
SSL Termination is a networking concept where SSL/TLS encryption is decrypted at a proxy or load balancer before traffic reaches backend servers. This offloads the computationally expensive encryption/decryption process from application servers, improving performance and simplifying certificate management. It's commonly implemented in reverse proxies, load balancers, or dedicated hardware appliances.
Developers should implement SSL Termination when building scalable web applications to reduce server load, centralize SSL certificate management, and enable advanced traffic inspection and routing. It's essential for high-traffic websites, microservices architectures, and environments requiring content-based routing or security scanning of encrypted traffic.