Proxy [glossary]deterministic
An application acting as an intermediary between clients and servers
In computing, a proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary for a remote service.
A client interacts with the proxy; the proxy copies the client's data to the actual server; the actual server replies to the proxy; the proxy sends the actual server's reply to the client.
[kube-proxy](/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kube-proxy/) is a network proxy that runs on each node in your cluster, implementing part of the Kubernetes [service](#gloss:service) concept.
You can run kube-proxy as a plain userland proxy service. If your operating system supports it, you can instead run kube-proxy in a hybrid mode that achieves the same overall effect using less system resources.