In the REC environment, the relay server acts as a proxy between the FCC and REC. Requests coming from the (now two) content servers to FCC resources such as APIs and data downloads are channeled through the relay server, where the server will reach out to the FCC to get the data and then "relay" it back to be picked up by the content servers. This includes public facing websites, internal tools used within REC and for eLMS. The relay server system was put in place after an incident where REC lost access to resources because an entire range of IP addresses were blacklisted because of the actions of unrelated bad actors that were in the same IP range. Having these functions on a relay server allow us to be able to quickly react in the event that in the future, our IP block is disrupted again as before.
Prior to this project, there were three relay servers, each serving a different purpose.
In this project, we have moved all of the functions of these three relay servers into a single server continuing provide similar services without any changes to the source codes of the individual programs.
As of 6:15PM ET on June 14, 2025, we have transitioned all of the services to the single server. We do not anticipate any post transition issues, but we will be watching for potential issues that may arise.
This relay server consolidation will result in some cost savings to REC.
