Proxy

Everything you needed to know about proxy servers in internet

A proxy is a server that acts as a gateway between your computer and your destination (website, IRC chat, etc.). These proxy receive requests from users to view, for example, a web page in internet. The proxy will then forward the request to the internet, find your requested page, then send the web page back to you, the user. Most proxies come with a cache (sounds like “cash”) feature that saves former websites that were visited on that proxy. Think of cache as a proxy’s storage room. Each site that you make the proxy visit, it saves in its own storage area (cache). So if the user or someone else requests the same site again later on, the proxy will go back into its cache, find the web page and send it back to the user. This saves time because the proxy doesn’t have to go search the Internet for the web page. It just pulls the site out of its cache.

The use of proxies to stay anonymous is a favorite thing to do among people on the Internet who are either paranoid or just security conscious. The anonymity factor comes from the proxy’s ability to hide your true Internet address. For example, if I were to run a scan on your computer right now, I would get the Internet address that was given to you by your ISP (internet service provider), but if I were to scan you while you were using a proxy, then I would get the Internet address of the proxy server. Basically the whole proxy picture looks like this…