Proxy Servers

Many a times we have come across the term "proxy servers". Proxy servers are an intermediate link between the "client" and the "internet". When a client sends a request to the internet, its first received by the proxy server and then its forwarded to the internet. The reply from the internet reaches the proxy server and then the proxy server forwards that result to the client. People use different proxy servers depending upon their need. The major types are listed below.

Web Proxy:

This server is used to monitor the contents transferred over the world wide web. These are mainly used in schools, colleges and other institutions where the offensive contents and unauthorized sites need to be blocked for client accessing. In these cases, the client sends a request to the internet, which is received by the proxy server and it forwards the request to the internet. The reply from the internet reaches the proxy server and if any offensive or illegal content is present, the access to those contents is prevented by the proxy server.

Anonymous Proxy:

This proxy server helps to remove information that may identify the person, information that are confidential from the user's request. For example, while accessing the social networking sites like, orkut, facebook etc. the information is at the risk of being known to many people. So, these servers take care of what contents must be seen by which group of people.

Caching Proxy:

This is a special type of proxy in which the proxy server replies to the client's request without contacting the main server. This action is possible when the proxy server has some part of the contents in the main server cached into it's memory and there must have been some information sent to the main server by the proxy that it will be replying to the client directly. This ensures the clients get their queries answered very soon.

Forced Proxy:

Forced proxy just forwards the client's request to the main server in the internet everytime. The client will not know that they are using a proxy site.

Open Proxy:

Open Proxy enables that anybody can obtain a link to this proxy server and use it. This causes security to be breached and facilitates exploitation by spammers. Many organizations deny requests that come from proxies that are known to be "Open".

From the above discussion we see that, proxies can enable faster operation by quickly processing user requests and reduce the load on the main server by serving some of the requests on their own and they also act as firewalls for educational insttutions.