What is Proxy Server?

One most common way to keep anonymous on the online world is through the utilization of a proxy server. A proxy server is defined as a machine which admits the incoming requests from the web and will be passed onto their destination. A proxy server is like the internet’s middlemen that maintain the separation of the computer and the destination web server.

Proxy Types

The proxy server can dwell inside the local computer of a user or at multiple points between the internet’s destination servers and a user’s computer. The types of proxy server are as follow:

  • The proxy server that forwards requests and replies unchanged is called as a tunneling proxy or usually a gateway.
  • Forward Proxy—is known as an Internet proxy that is utilized to recover from a variety of sources, most commonly from anywhere on the World Wide Web.
  • Reverse Proxy—usually, a reserve proxy is an internet proxy used to act as a front-end to protect and control accessing of the server from a private network. It as well performs tasks like verification, load-balancing, or decryption and so on.

Two Main Purposes of a Proxy Server

  • For Performance Improvement. A proxy server can significantly improve the performance of a user’s computer in a way that it saves all the request results for a particular period of time. Just imagine the scenario where both users A and B access the WWW or World Wide Web using a proxy server. At first, user A requests for a particular web page, which you may call Page 1. Later in time, user B also requests for the same page. Instead of passing on the request to the Web server where Page 1 dwells—which is a time-consuming operation—what the proxy server does is to merely return Page 1 which is by now fetched for user A. This becomes a faster operation because oftentimes, a proxy server is on the similar network as its user. Authentic proxy servers maintained by a large number of users.
  • For Requests Filtering. A proxy server may be utilized in filtering the requests. For e.g., business companies may use the proxy server to avert its users from opening a certain set of websites.

To make sure that your privacy is protected while using a proxy server, you must acquire one from the most trusted provider. Think whether you want to get public proxies which everybody uses or a private one which, of course, will cost you some money. If you go for the latter, ensure that the company from where your proxy server will come from is provided with a policy that states they do not collect log files, because if yes then your privacy is not that private anymore.

Conclusion

Proxy servers are used for different advantages such as to share internet connections on a LAN or Local Area Network, implement access control on the internet, hiding an Internet Protocol address, accessing of blocked websites, speeding up of internet surfing and much more. Just be a responsible user in every single thing that you do on the web to enjoy the benefits at its best.