the.com/api gateway
the bouncer who checks your ID, charges the cover, and pretends to remember your name.
means a server that sits in front of your apis and handles routing, auth, rate limiting, and logging so your actual services don't have to.
from emerged as microservices replaced monoliths — once you had dozens of services instead of one app, someone had to stand at the door and sort the traffic.
single entry pointclients see one address, not fifty backends
common casualtybecomes a bottleneck everyone blames first
popular pickskong, nginx, aws api gateway, envoy
hidden joboften does auth so services don't repeat it