SOCK proxy again

[Dave A]

I recently posted about the lack of support for SOCKS proxy in WebServices.

It is possible to write a low level class that will tunnel through a SOCKS
proxy and return an open TcpSocket (www.componentspace.com has one) but a
WebRequest (that WebServices are based on) does not allow access to the
underlying TcpSocket unfortunately and nor does it allow you to configure a
proxy other than HTTP.

I started thinking that SOCKS proxies must be a thing of the past, totally
dead and no longer support by any Microsoft technology. Only tonight I
discovered that the latest version MSN Messenger supports SOCKS proxies! IE
does too.

What is the status of SOCKS proxies? Are they dead? Who uses them? Should a
widely distributed WinForms application that needs to make SOAP calls
support a SOCKS proxy server? And most importantly, if so then how?

Regards
Dave A

 

[Chris Mullins]

[No SOCKS Support in .NET]

I agree, this always struck me as strange. Especially now that MS is
including a SecureStream class over TCP sockets. A SOCKS enabled socket
seemed a very natural thing.

Fortunatly there is an answer:
http://www.mentalis.org/soft/class.qpx?id=9

I've had no troubles tying these together with all the other socket code
that MS does provide.

 

[Dave A]

Chris,

That is great at the TcpClient level but how then would you get a
WebServices/SOAP request to use it?

Regards
Dave A

 

[Chris Mullins]

That's a good question and I wish I had an answer for it.

I would have sworn I rembered reading an MSDN article about a year ago
regarding .NET 2.0 and how you could configure sockets to use the IE Proxy
settings. I just searched up and down the web for that article and can't
find anything though.

You could try asking on the Web Service Extension (WSE) newsgroup.

--
Chris Mullins

Chris,

That is great at the TcpClient level but how then would you get a
WebServices/SOAP request to use it?

Regards
Dave A

[No SOCKS Support in .NET]

I agree, this always struck me as strange. Especially now that MS is
including a SecureStream class over TCP sockets. A SOCKS enabled socket
seemed a very natural thing.

Fortunatly there is an answer:
http://www.mentalis.org/soft/class.qpx?id=9

I've had no troubles tying these together with all the other socket code
that MS does provide.

 

[Dave A]

Chris,

You may be thinking of
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/08/AutomaticProxyDetection/default.aspx

I found this poor sod ran head long into the problem and MS support has
absolutelty no idea about it...
http://www.dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/18/91588.aspx

Regards
Dave

That's a good question and I wish I had an answer for it.

I would have sworn I rembered reading an MSDN article about a year ago
regarding .NET 2.0 and how you could configure sockets to use the IE Proxy
settings. I just searched up and down the web for that article and can't
find anything though.

You could try asking on the Web Service Extension (WSE) newsgroup.

--
Chris Mullins

Chris,

That is great at the TcpClient level but how then would you get a
WebServices/SOAP request to use it?

Regards
Dave A

[No SOCKS Support in .NET]

I agree, this always struck me as strange. Especially now that MS is
including a SecureStream class over TCP sockets. A SOCKS enabled socket
seemed a very natural thing.

Fortunatly there is an answer:
http://www.mentalis.org/soft/class.qpx?id=9

I've had no troubles tying these together with all the other socket code
that MS does provide.

 

[Chris Mullins]

You may be thinking of
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/08/AutomaticProxyDetection/default.aspx

Yea, that's the one I read. That seems to answer your question, doesn't it?

I found this poor sod ran head long into the problem and MS support has
absolutelty no idea about it...
http://www.dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/18/91588.aspx

Probably the same issue - I wonder what the final resolution was.

Most of the stuff I do is TCP based, and we had major socket / proxy
problems for a while. We ended up using the Mentalis Proxy Socket class as
our base socket, and that cleaned up things quite a bit.