Set Up a Proxy Server the Easy Way
Learning how to set up a proxy server has to be done if you don’t want to be held back by limitations. The word “proxy” means “substitute” or anything that serves as an agent, an enabler. Online a proxy is usually a computer that acts as a substitute server. In computing a proxy server is simply an informational middleman, if you will; it handles exchanges between the requester and the ultimate server. A client connects to the proxy server and requests some service, like web page or access to a file. The proxy server analyzes the request according to its filtering rules. Perhaps the most common such rule is banning access by clients on certain IP addresses.
To properly set up a proxy server, a wide variety of choices exist out there. To start off, let’s take a look at something by the name of WinProxy. One reason why it’s so popular is that nothing actually needs to be installed on the client (or requester) side. NAT is available since WinProxy is a transparent proxy. This is important, since proxys are usually used for purposes of anonymity. Apart from caching and the usual security features like filtering, WinProxy supports important protocols like HTTP, FTP, Telnet, Secure Sockets and DNS.
The WinProxy Server is easy to install and configure. It’s a great option when you want to set up a proxy server. Just make sure to take common initial steps such as installing TCP/IP on your network. After that you can go on to install WinProxy itself on your system. You can purchase this the traditional way in a store or through a simple download. Newbies should use the handy installation wizard for automatic installation. The first screen that appears is the product registration screen,which requires the user to enter the product key. Further screens will ascertain the kind of connection you have to access the internet, dial-up or broadband. Sometimes you’ll have to tell the program yourself. Next,it will ask to enter the username and password of the Internet connection. WinProxy then configures the internal and external IP addresses for the network. It assigns a unique address automatically,to each device on the LAN as internal addresses. The IP address that the Internet Service Provider has assigned to the modem or router becomes the external address. This external address is what someone else will see when his system requests something from yours. By now you would be practically at the end of setup, ready to take on the worldwide web anonymously through your proxy server, courtesy WinProxy.