Thread:Extension talk:CentralNotice/Caching Overhaul - Frontend Proxy/Node.js as frontend proxy/reply (2)

I guess the terminology here is a bit confusing

If you want to write it as a Varnish plugin in C, it should probably be a Varnish VMOD as opposed to inline VCL C, which is fairly limited and hacky.

If it's done as a backend to Varnish, it can be done with Node.js and would probably live on another server. That would likely mean it gets each and every request forwarded to the backend, but on a high performance, low latency network that's not a very big deal.

My main concern is that it'll actually be Varnish handling the frontend HTTP request, and not another (custom) solution. That makes maintaining this a lot harder for Operations, and seems to have little advantage for developing this. I think I have a slight preference for this to be implemented as a backend to Varnish rather than a (VMOD/C/LUA) plugin, because it's cleaner and a bit more portable, and just slightly less efficient. But, with a well implemented and very efficient Varnish plugin (VMOD) I'm open to having it on the Varnish boxes, too.