Proxy Server using Nginx On Windows Server 2022

Nginx is open source software for web serving, reverse proxying, caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. In addition to its HTTP server capabilities, NGINX can also function as a proxy server for email IMAP, POP3, and SMTP and a reverse proxy and load balancer for HTTP, TCP, and UDP servers.

Nginx is known for being the fastest web server. The softwares structure is asynchronous and event-driven. Which enables the processing of many requests at the same time. NGINX is highly scalable as well, meaning that its service grows along with its clients traffic.

Nginx Server Features
Reverse proxy with caching
Load balancing with in-band health checks
TLS/SSL with SNI and OCSP stapling support, via OpenSSL
FastCGI, SCGI, uWSGI, support with caching
Name-based and IP-based virtual servers
URL rewriting and redirection
SMTP, POP3, and IMAP proxy
Handling of static files, index files, and auto-indexing
Keep-alive and pipelined connections support
Access control based
Response rate limiting
WebSockets

NGINX can proxy IMAP, POP3 and SMTP protocols to one of the upstream mail servers that host mail accounts and thus can be used as a single endpoint for email clients. This may bring in a number of benefits, such as

Easy scaling the number of mail servers
Choosing a mail server basing on different rules, for example, choosing the nearest server basing on a clients IP address
Distributing the load among mail servers