Newer versions also have few more tricks up the sleeve, like you can probe and act upon client's TCP RTT and RTT variance (because apparently newer kernels just track that info and it can be accessed from userspace).

We ended up using HAPRoxy as front for pretty much everything (even if techncially slapping just Nginx would be simpler at first), just because it often happens that this and that needs to be added (stuff like adding proper headers when devs don't want to figure out how to make their '00s CMS emi the '20s security headers).

It can also talk directly via unix socket to the backends so you don't even need to have a bunch of ports open if you want to front something.