Proxy servers

Proxy servers

Despite the complex sounding name and the misunderstandings that circulate on the Internet, proxy servers are very simple to understand. A proxy server is simply a computer on the network or Internet that allows machines inside a subnetwork to connect to other machines outside that subnet, without having to worry about IP addresses and whether they are unique or not. Proxy servers also can hide the identity of machines (IP address) inside the subnetwork from the outside.

When a user inside a network wants to access a Web page on the Internet, her machine talks to the proxy server on their network which then sends requests out to the Web server. When anything comes back to the proxy server from that Web server, it routes it to the proper machine inside the network. The proxy server keeps track of all the connections to the outside world, but hides all information about the network and blocks unauthorized queries into the network from outside.

Proxy servers have many purposes. One of the most common is to allow any IP addresses to be used inside a network, but not broadcast outside that network. The proxy server translates the internal IP addresses to the proxy server's as far as the Internet is concerned, and manages all the traffic both ways through the proxy server.

This also allows anonymity. If you want to hide your machine's identify from anyone else, you can use a public proxy server (often called an anonymous server) to hide your IP address from whoever you connect to, and the anonymous server will handle all the translations for you. Often, anonymous servers are designed to destroy all traces of connections through it after they close so there is no record of where you have been or what you have done. If you want to surf the Web anonymously, you can use one of the public proxy servers to do this. Some are free, some charge for the service. You can find a list of anonymous servers by searching for that term in a search engine.

One other benefit to proxy servers is that because they handle a lot of Web traffic in and out, they can create a cache of the contents of a page so that if two people inside the network request the same page, it can be retrieved from the proxy server instead of the Web. This is often useful for reducing Internet traffic to popular sites, and speeds up the browsing experience for the user. This type of function is often called an HTTP proxy server or similar name.

Proxy servers are a useful way of managing IP addresses for networks, and the routers you buy in consumer electronic shops, including the wireless routers that dominate the market now, are proxy servers. They provide an IP address through DHCP to any connecting machine, and provide the translation of that address to the Internet.

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Keywords: Proxy servers: What is a network proxy server? How can proxy servers hide my IP address?