The technical principles of HAN

The Reverse-Proxy concept

According to the definition, HAN is based on the technological concept of a reverse proxy.

As you can see in the illustration, users can only access online resources by communicating with the HAN server. To publish online resources using HAN server, the administrator defines a URL as an entry point for each e-journal in the form

https://<HAN-Server>/han/<HAN-ID>

The user then points a browser at this URL in order to access the on-line resource. The HAN server then initiates communication with the content provider, executing any scripts necessary for authentication or other purposes. Once the content server supplies the desired document, HAN delivers it to the user.

Definition

Reverse-Proxy
A reverse proxy is an intermediate web server that receives requests from a browser, communicates with an actual web server, and passes content from that server back to the browser. This means that the browser does not communicate with the actual content provider, but only with the reverse proxy server. The advantage is that the reverse proxy server can manage all the ancillary communication with the content provider that is necessary to obtain the content.