OpenEuphoria

Re: Contests / Idea for a New Project

• Posted by 1evan at sbcglobal.net Jun 19, 2003
• 542 views

C. K. Lester wrote:

> 
> Yeah, well, I still don't know what the heck an HTTP proxy is or should do.
> :/

http://webopedia.internet.com/TERM/p/proxy_server.html

A server that sits between a client application, such as a Web browser, 
and a real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see 
if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request 
to the real server.

Proxy servers have two main purposes:
# Improve Performance: Proxy servers can dramatically improve 
performance for groups of users. This is because it saves the results of 
all requests for a certain amount of time. Consider the case where both 
user X and user Y access the World Wide Web through a proxy server. 
First user X requests a certain Web page, which we'll call Page 1. 
Sometime later, user Y requests the same page. Instead of forwarding the 
request to the Web server where Page 1 resides, which can be a 
time-consuming operation, the proxy server simply returns the Page 1 
that it already fetched for user X. Since the proxy server is often on 
the same network as the user, this is a much faster operation. Real 
proxy servers support hundreds or thousands of users. The major online 
services such as Compuserve and America Online, for example, employ an 
array of proxy servers.
# Filter Requests: Proxy servers can also be used to filter requests. 
For example, a company might use a proxy server to prevent its employees 
from accessing a specific set of Web sites.

See the Server Types page in the quick reference section of Webopedia 
for a comparison of server types.