You may be familiar with the term “proxy” in terms of someone acting in your place. The term is usually used when you are using someone to do something for you. Like you registered to vote by proxy, so someone else registered you officially in your place. But what does the term mean when it is talking about computers?
In technology, “proxy” is used usually in terms of servers. A proxy server is, by definition, “a dedicated computer or a software system running on a computer that acts as an intermediary between an endpoint device, such as a computer, and another server from which a user or client is requesting a service. The proxy server may exist in the same machine as a firewall server or it may be on a separate server, which forwards requests through the firewall.” What in the world does that actually mean?
In layman’s terms, or at least in non-techy person terms, it means that it is a server that gets a request of some kind, usually for loading a website. When it gets the request, it will look through its cache of saved pages and try to shoot it back to the computer requesting it as quickly as possible. If the proxy server doesn’t have the webpage saved in a cache, then it goes to the site using its own IP address, not yours, to get the info and send it back to you.
Why Do They Exist?
Proxy servers were created for safety reasons, but they are used for both legal and illegal practices. In the legal sense, they are used to help keep information secure and keep your computer secure. If you are using your computer for personal reasons, they will keep anonymous surfing possible and increase personal privacy.
Yet, the proxy servers that can enhance safety can also be used against the users. Since the proxy server is invisible all of the requests will look like they came from the source you were looking for. So you could be monitored by a proxy server without ever knowing that you were.
Proxy servers can also be used to block things from coming to your computer. Like putting on a child safety filter, so explicit, graphic, or illegal websites would not be able to come through to you. They can also block websites that violate freedom of speech or ones that disclose government activity and behavior. So really, they have a lot of different purposes.
Types of Proxies
- Transparent Proxies: These are usually in place in corporate networks. They make the network traffic go a lot faster because the proxy server keeps the information in an easy accessible cache. And they maintain a firewall so that other computers cannot get into the network.
- Anonymous Proxies: These proxies will hide the IP address of the person using them toe get them information that is blocked by a firewall or other security. They will increase protection from hacking.
- Highly Anonymous Proxies: These proxies will make themselves appear to not even be used by clients and present a public IP address that hides the proxy. So they are hiding both the IP address of the person using them as well as allow people to get into sites that block proxy servers.
- Domain Name Service (DNS) Proxies: They will forward DNS requests from LANs to Internet DNS servers and cache information to increase their own speed.
- Socks 4 and 5 Proxies: They provide proxy services for DNS lookup in web traffic and can offer Sock protocols.
