Preserving client ip with apache reverse proxy

The first thing that I thought of was the “X-Forwarded-For” headers, which is an HTTP header inserted into the original HTTP GET request whose value is equal to the client’s public IP. Turns out apache reverse proxy inserts this header by default. So we somehow need to instruct the backend server itself to provide the application with the correct client IP.

If your backend server is a Tomcat server the solution cam be using the RemoteIP tomcat valve.

It’s quite simple to configure in that all that needs to be done is to modify tomcat server.xml to recognise original client IP rather than the proxy IP by adding the following to server.xml:

<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteIpValve" internalProxies="127\.0\.0\.1" />

make sure to change 127.0.0.1 to the address of the apache reverse proxy.

The application could now recognise the original client IP.

The apache equivalent of the above method is using mod_rpaf for Apache 1.3 & 2.2.x and mod_remoteip for Apache 2.4 and 2.5. 

These apache modules can be used to preserve both remote IP/HOST. Internally they use X-Forwarded-For header to detect a proxy in it’s list of known proxies and reset the headers accordingly. This works with any proxy server in the front end provided that the proxy server sets X-Forwarded-For header. 

To use mod_rpaf, install and enable it in the backend server and add following directives in the module’s configuration:

RPAFenable On
RPAFsethostname On
RPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

Remote IP is automatically preserved when RPAFenable On directive is used. RPAFsethostname On directive should be used to preserve host and RPAFproxy_ips is the list of known proxy ips.

Restart backend apache server and you are good to go.

For mod_remoteip, it’s a bit similar, the configuration should look something lke this:

RemoteIPHeader X-Real-IP
RemoteIPInternalProxy 1.2.3.4
RemoteIPInternalProxy 5.6.7.8

mod_remoteip however has a lot more configuration options.

When the proxy server is an Apache, ProxyPreserveHost directive in mod_proxy can be used to preserve the remote host not the remote ip. This is useful for situations where name based virtual hosting is used and the backend server needs to know the virtual name of host.

Open mod_proxy configuration file of your proxy server and enter directive, ProxyPreserveHost On, and restart your apache instance.