SharePoint: Web Front End Server (Definition and Explanation)

SharePoint : Web Front End server (WFE)

A web server that handles web page requests from users, processes the request and returns the data.
They process HTTP/S traffic and rely on Internet Information Server (IIS) to provide much of the web server 'stack'
In a farm there can be multiple Web Front End (WFE) servers and a Network Load Balancer (NLB) will distribute requests between them.
This is the primary method of scaling in SharePoint - as the number of users grows you add more WFE servers.
Is also used to add redundancy - If a WFE fails the NLB can distribute requests to other WFE's.

A typical SharePoint farm