Proxy Servers: Explained This tutorial is going to attempt to explain what a proxy server is and how to use one.

Http Headers The internet has millions of users world wide. There are people from almost every country in the world connecting to it. So what exactly happens when you go to a website? Lets say you go to Yahoo.com. This is an example of everything that happens.

1. The domain name Yahoo.com is translated to the servers I.P. Address that host Yahoo.com using the Domain Name System otherwise known as DNS. 2. The web browser you are using connects to the server Yahoo.com is hosted on & sends an Http header to Yahoo.com. In the header contains the following information -Your I.P. Address (See below for details) -Your Browser & Os Information -An Http request And a few other things are included in the header. 3. Yahoo.com can now send back its homepage (index.html) to the I.P. Address contained within the header.

Note: I.P. stands for Internet Protocol. Each computer on any kind of network has a unique numeric I.P. address that no other computer on the network has. When you connect to the internet you are assigned an I.P. address by your ISP.

Now if you understood the above you should have a basic idea of how headers work. You only need to know this much in order to understand how a Proxy server works.

Proxy Servers A Proxy server allows you to connect to it and send http request. It will then fullfill the request and send the page back to you. Here is an example of a proxy server in action. Let's say I have configured my browser to use a proxy server. When I type Http://www.Yahoo.com in my browser does the following. 1. Resolves the name Yahoo.com into the I.P. Addy of the server Yahoo.com is hosted on. 2. My Browser then connects to the proxy server and sends the http request with the following information

-My I.P. Address -My Browser & Os Information -An Http request And some other information. 3. The Proxy Server then looks at the request. It sees that I wanted to connect to Yahoo.com and get Index.html. So the proxy sends a new Http request to Yahoo.com but this time instead of my information in the header the proxy servers I.P. addy is sent. 4. The Proxy Server sends back to me Yahoo.com. Basically a proxy server is the man in the middle. Look at the following image. It shows you what your connection looks like without the use of a proxy server.

The following image shows you what your connection looks like while using a proxy server.

I hope you understand how a proxy works. If you do not then please reply to this thread with your questions on it.

How to use a proxy This part of the tutorial is going to show you how to configure your browser to use a Proxy Server.

You 1st need to get a Proxy. You can get them all over the internet. Here are a few sites you can get them at: http://www.allproxies.com http://www.stayinvisible.com http://www.proxymania.com Now you can follow the steps below.

Internet Explorer Steps The following steps will help you configure Internet Explorer to use a proxy server. 1. Open a new instance of the browser. 2. Go to Tools > Internet Options on the file menu as seen below.

3. The Internet Options dialog should have now appeared on your screen. Click on the tab that is labeled Connections. 4. Now hit the button entitled LAN Settings and another dialog will appear.

5. You should now see a area on your screen were it says Proxy Server. Enter the address & port number of the proxy server as seen below.

It took forever for me to write this were I was satisfied with it. I hope you like it and I will add on to it later explaining more technical details. If any part of this tutorial is inaccurate please pm me so I can correct it.

Forward and Reverse Proxies

Apache can be configured in both forward and reverse proxy mode.

An ordinary forward proxy is an intermediate server that sits between the client and the origin server. In order to get content from the origin server, the client sends a request to the proxy naming the origin server as the target and the proxy then requests the content from the origin server and returns it to the client. The client must be specially configured to use the forward proxy to access other sites. A typical usage of a forward proxy is to provide Internet access to internal clients that are otherwise restricted by a firewall. The forward proxy can also use caching (as provided by mod_cache) to reduce network usage. The forward proxy is activated using the ProxyRequests directive. Because forward proxys allow clients to access arbitrary sites through your server and to hide their true origin, it is essential that you secure your server so that only authorized clients can access the proxy before activating a forward proxy. A reverse proxy, by contrast, appears to the client just like an ordinary web server. No special configuration on the client is necessary. The client makes ordinary requests for content in the name-space of the reverse proxy. The reverse proxy then decides where to send those requests, and returns the content as if it was itself the origin. A typical usage of a reverse proxy is to provide Internet users access to a server that is behind a firewall. Reverse proxies can also be used to balance load among several back-end servers, or to provide caching for a slower backend server. In addition, reverse proxies can be used simply to bring several servers into the same URL space. A reverse proxy is activated using the ProxyPass directive or the [P] flag to the RewriteRule directive. It is not necessary to turn ProxyRequests on in order to configure a reverse proxy.