| FAQ Article: What is a proxy server? |
A proxy server is a kind of buffer between your computer and the Internet resources you are accessing. They accumulate and save files that are most often requested by thousands of Internet users in a special database, called “cache”.
Therefore, proxy servers are able to increase the speed of your connection to the Internet. The cache of a proxy server may already contain information you need by the time of your request, making it possible for the proxy to deliver it immediately.
The overall increase in performance may be very high. Also, proxy servers can help in cases when some owners of the Internet resources impose some restrictions on users from certain countries or geographical regions.
Basically instead of you connecting directly to the server you wish to (i.e. a web server somewhere) - when you use a proxy server, your system only connects to the proxy itself, and then tells the proxy what server/site you want to connect to.
You know in those cool hacker films when you see people bouncing their phone calls off of different sattelites around the world to make themselves untracable? :) Well - think of a proxy server as the same kind of thing, for your computer. It allows you to go "through" another server somewhere, as opposed to you connecting directly to the site/server you want to contact.
Some proxy servers are anonymous and some are not - that is, some will reveal your true IP address to the site/server you are visiting, whilst anonymous proxy servers will not (the end site/server will only know the IP of the proxy, and not your IP!).
Some proxy servers are public (i.e. anyone can connect to them and surf through them) - but most proxy servers are not public and will have some kind of restriction to prevent you using them. For this reason, there are sites on the Internet dedicated to finding and listing public proxy servers for people to use! One such site is: publicproxyservers.com.
Please be aware though - most public proxy servers are not intended to be public and you may be using them without the owners knowledge (i.e. someone has set up a proxy on their network/system, and not realised it is not secure and that anyone can surf through it).
Using some software - it is possible to surf through multiple proxy servers. This is called proxy chaining.
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Posted on: 18-08-1999
Article has been viewed 11522 times
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