Redirect vs Forward

In the context of web programming, a lot of ambiguity existed between Redirect and Forward. Here is a short summary of the differences between these two terms.

1) Forward can only be direct to an internal page, however Redirect can be used both to an internal page and external page.

2) Forward is much faster than Redirect

3) With Forward the browser is unaware of what happens, and the URL address remains the original link, while Redirect will initiate a new request that the browser will update its address to the new link.

4) As a result of the browser awareness, the refresh function will be failed in the Forward since the URL has not changed, but the Redirect will be all the same.

5) Still with the same reason, with those operations have side-effect, say update the status of database, a Redirect should be used to avoid the refresh Forward to generate any duplicate operations.