Proxy Server

On the Internet a proxy server is a computer that acts as a go between shielding a user's identity from the server that they are trying to access. The content that a proxy server can transfer varies; documents, web pages or another proxy server can all be accessed with relative security. The problem with most proxy servers is that the server itself has a record of your connection, your identity on the web. It is possible to trace the connection of the proxy server back to you. This is not possible when you employ the services of the Jumpto Master Server. This is our version of the proxy server with one very stark difference, the Master Server is not on the Internet, it is on your internal network. So in that respect, the Master Server is an anonymous proxy server. If the Master Server is located a thousand miles from your home, then that is the point of access of the Internet, not your home.

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server evaluates the request according to its filtering rules. For example, it may filter traffic by IP address or protocol. If the request is validated by the filter, the proxy provides the resource by connecting to the relevant server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it 'caches' responses from the remote server, and returns subsequent requests for the same content directly.

A proxy server has many potential purposes, including:

• To keep machines behind it anonymous (mainly for security).
• To speed up access to resources (using caching). Web proxies are commonly used to cache web pages from a web server.
• To apply access policy to network services or content, e.g. to block undesired sites.
• To log / audit usage, i.e. to provide company employee Internet usage reporting.
• To bypass security/ parental controls.
• To scan transmitted content for malware before delivery.
• To scan outbound content, e.g., for data leak protection.
• To circumvent regional restrictions.

A proxy server that passes requests and replies unmodified is usually called a gateway or sometimes tunneling proxy.

A proxy server can be placed in the user's local computer or at various points between the user and the destination servers on the Internet.

A reverse proxy is (usually) an Internet-facing proxy used as a front-end to control and protect access to a server on a private network, commonly also performing tasks such as load-balancing, authentication, decryption or caching.

¹ Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server on Feb. 20, 2010. Partially adapted. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License.