The main purposes of proxy servers:
How to setup your browser for proxy access:
To set up your web browser follow the intructions below. You have to replace and with the proxy address and its port. It is preferred to use an IP address instead of proxy's hostname to avoid the name resolution that your browser will perform in case of hostname usage. Examples:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
1) Choose the Tools menu.
2) Select Internet Options.
3) Select Connections.
4) Select LAN Settings.
5) Check "Use a proxy server".
6) Enter in the "Address" text box.
7) Enter in the "Port" text box.
8) Press "Apply".
9) Press "OK".
Netscape Communicator(Navigator) v4.0 and higher
1) Choose the Edit menu.
2) Select Preferences.
3) Select Advanced->Proxies.
4) Check "Manual Proxy Configuration".
5) Click "View...".
6) Set the appropriate fields to and values, it depends on proxy type you want to use.
There are 3 levels of HTTP proxies:
How to know the level of the proxy?
Forum Proxy Leecher is an an intelligent proxy leecher that can get proxies from forums, however it's also a good proxy tester to check the level of the proxies. It's especially useful if you want to test a great amount of proxies.
You can use several proxy servers simultaneously. It is called "cascaded proxies".
But you may expect some speed loss in this way.
Some Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) information
HTTP is a high level (application level) protocol which provides the speed you need and quality data transfer. HTTP based on request/response mechanism. The requesting application (client) establishes the connection between you and server. It sends the request to the server in the following form: request method, URI (uniform resource identifier), protocol version, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) coded message witch contains service information, client information and sometimes message body. Server processes the request and answers with a message which contains status string followed by the MIME coded message.
We can see that client sends to server the great amount of information including the information about itself. This information we are interested in ?it is called request fields. The header of request consists of the following fields (only those we are interested in): Pragma, Forwarded, Client IP, Via, X-Forwarded For, Proxy-Connection, Remote Address. These fields cause the privacy leak. Elite proxies correct this fields to bring you maximum privacy.
SOCKS proxies
SOCKS is a protocol that relays TCP sessions at a firewall host to allow application users transparent access across the firewall. Because the protocol is independent of application protocols, it can be (and has been) used for many different services, such as telnet, ftp, finger, whois, gopher, WWW, etc. Access control can be applied at the beginning of each TCP session; thereafter the server simply relays the data between the client and the application server, incurring minimum processing overhead. Since SOCKS never has to know anything about the application protocol, it should also be easy for it to accommodate applications which use encryption to protect their traffic from nosey snoopers. No information about the client is sent to the server. Thus there is no need to test the anonymity level of the SOCKS proxies.
About the Author:
Terry Steele, the webmaster of My-Proxy (www.my-proxy.com), home of free security knowledge, online security tools and proxy softwares.
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