The role of an API gateway in a distributed architecture is to act as a single entry point for all client requests and to route those requests to the appropriate microservices. It acts as a proxy between the client and the microservices, providing an extra layer of security, control, and scalability.
API gateway also handles request authentication and authorizations, logs and monitors requests and responses, and can perform load balancing to distribute requests evenly across multiple instances of each microservice. This helps to improve the overall performance and availability of the system by ensuring that requests are processed efficiently and reliably. Besides, it also helps to implement business logic and provides a unified interface to ensure compatibility between microservices.
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