Proxy Servers........I NEED HELP!! You may have the answer I need. C'mon, take a quick look;).

[turf]

Yes, I'm one of those paranoid security freaks, problem is I'm not quite sure what I'm doing yet.

I'm sort of a newbie to computers. I just built my first system back in June, and I'm still learning things. Right now all I'm running for security is a single firewall. But I would like to find a good fast free public proxy server (say that one three times fast!!) outside of the USA to connect to. I found a really cool program called the proxomitron, which includes some really cool filters to take care of those annoying banner ads, as well as eliminating "web bugs" and any other type of "spyware" out there on the net. My problem is I can't find a good proxy to connect to, and I wouldn't know how to set up my internet connection to take advantage of it if I did find one. So, if anyone would be so kind as to explain exacty how a proxy works, and how I can gain use of one, you would be a great help to me.
Thanks. I know I can always get good answers from all of you "AnandTechers"

 

[ElDiablo]

I think I can clarify the proxy server, but no idea where to find one.

According to my networks book, "a proxy is a process that sits between a client process and a server process. To the client, the proxy appears to be the server and to the server, the proxy appears to be the client. " So, the proxy is an intermediary between you and wherever you want to go. Like the guy that the king's had tasting there food before they ate it.

A good use for this is a cache server that caches a bunch of web pages so that users of the proxy can bypass the original server (quicker to get from local proxy than external server).

Also, this would be a good way to avoid attacks. If someone is watching traffic into and out of server A, then they think the proxy is your computer (and probably others) and would try to hack that and not yours. This is better suited to a LAN where they have one computer connected to the inter-net and there intra-net but should provide a similar service to you.

Hope that helps and good luck finding one.

Drew

 

[SilverBack]

Hi Turf,
A proxy box is supposed to be located "before" you access the internet. It's your gateway as you leave your network. So it wouldn't do any good to find a proxy outside your network as they wouldn't give you permissions to enter.
A proxy is a software firewall...

 

[Fallen Kell]

A proxy is FAR from being a firewall. ElDiablo explained it the best. It is another system, usually the one that also has the firewall software located on it too. The whole idea of this is that in a computer network of several computers, all of these computers would connect to the proxy when they want to go surf the net. From the outside, all the people on the net would see is the proxy surfing the net, not the fact that there are say 10 computers that are really surfing the net. The proxy should also have the highest amount of security software in place, as it is the only computer that can be seen and accessed from the outside (unless you set it up so that you can connect from the outside and go back in). In general, it acts by helping to reduce the number of systems that can be hacked from the outside from the total number on your network to just the one that is running the proxy software, allowing you to only have to worry about security patches, and software upgrades on that one system not all of them.

There is a downside to using a proxy, you will have all kinds of problems with games and other networked software unless the origional programers took the possibility that you might be using a proxy into consideration. And you also won't really see a benifit of using a proxy for less then 5 computers, and also will need to spend a good amount of money putting a proxy server together that can handle all the routing and network through-put that it will required to handle without significant quality loss.

To be honest with you, all you really need for a multi-computer network is a hardware firewall/router and then if you are still paranoid, add a software firewall on all your systems incase they get through the hardware firewall. Very few hackers can get through one firewall and if they can you are going to be screwed no matter what cause if they can do that, they can easily break-thru a proxy server.

 

[AC]

Fallen Kell's description is more characteristic of a gateway, wherein it is the connecting point between a LAN and a WAN and in which case acts as a firewall.

However, a gateway can also be a proxy server. A proxy on a local network can be used to cache web pages for faster viewing by avoiding the need to send requests to the actual sites as ElDiablo stated. A proxy server also allows you to login and provides a reverse gateway to access stuff on a LAN from a WAN. A proxy server could also allow you to login and provide access to the WAN from a WAN (like the AOL service for people who already have internet connections).

However, the proxy server would need quite a bit of bandwidth and processing power to handle your incoming requests, process them, redirect them, receive the data, process them, and then finally redirect them to you.

I have tried a few of those free proxy servers that exist on the net and have found them to be ridiculously slow and really inhibits your web surfing (web pages have often timed out due to the lag). Thus, I decided to leave proxy servers alone.

If you really need a proxy server, get signup for a service like AOL's. I can't confirm any others that uses proxies (I have friends who use AOL from their T1 wired dorm rooms and have monitored their connections).

However, keep in mind that most ISPs provide dynamic IP addresses, which is already enough security for the average user.

I use Norton Internet Security 2001 as my firewall which was originally @Guard (I dind't realize this until I bought NIS after having a shareware version of @Guard installed). They basically added a simpler interface. Ads are removed from any program that utilizes HTML for implementing ads. You can customize it to block information you don't want to leak. It comes with Norton AntiVirus as well. I really like it. Some games need some special settings though to get them to work.