how does a proxy work

[Rob]

I have a router at work and I am blocking certain sites like break.com
myspace and other slackoff sites. Currently, I'm blocking sites by domain
and or ip address. I was wondering how easy it would be to circumvent this.
I don't know much about proxies but from what I do know I suppose if someone
had one they could access those sites but is it software you install or do
you simply access the blocked websites by requesting the info from another
website?

 

[RJK]

As I understand it, it's an ISP's cache of frequently, (or popular if you
like), web pages, that can be rapidly served up, without having to go to the
"web" to get them ! ...or is that not what you were asking ?

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

...oops ! sorry, ...thought the subject was the post ! ...tired / going to
bed !

regards, Richard

 

[Rob]

Hi Richard, actually yeah, I did know that part of the answer. I guess it's
two things, 1 part to help speed up searches by caching pages like you said,
but I thought another function was to allow create other channels of
accessing sites and in my concern, by avoiding certain content blocks on a
network.

 

[P. Johnson]

Hi Richard, actually yeah, I did know that part of the answer. I guess
it's two things, 1 part to help speed up searches by caching pages like
you said, but I thought another function was to allow create other
channels of accessing sites and in my concern, by avoiding certain content
blocks on a network.

It depends largely on the configuration of the proxy in question. Any
network with more than a couple machines should have a caching web proxy
available to users (preferably set up in a manner that users do not have to
do anything special to use it¹). A good proxy will also let you use other
plugins to block things like ads (http://adzapper.sf.net/), saving your
network more bandwidth, and to filter sites your company finds
objectionable (though this should be used sparingly:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/23/0642201).

The other kind of proxy is an open proxy set up someplace else out on the
net, that anybody can use to browse (to circumvent company or regional web
filtering) or spam through. These are usually best blocked as they're
discovered in a company environment, but from allowing connections to them,
as well as from them, for what I would hope are obvious reasons.


¹ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/TransparentProxy.html (Not sure if there's a way to
pull the same thing off in Windows, much less cheaply)

 

[RJK]

I was interested in this and have been having a read on the web. Several interesting points and explanations on these pages:-

http://www.wikihow.com/Restrict-Web-Browsing-Using-Internet-Explorer

....my oh my, the following looks rather complicated !
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/co...+using+a+proxy&rnum=10&hl=en#b81eb6176c83a273

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Network_and_Internet/Proxy_Server_Tools/GateWall.html

....looks like there's even software like this, to circumvent proxy restrictions !
http://www.proxyway.com/www/anonymous-web-surfing-d.html

....it all looks hideously complicated, and also looks like one has to use a mess of programs, and spend forever configuring them !

regrards, Richard

 

[Rob]

Thanks P.Johnson that's what I thought. RJK, thanks for the links.