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What Is a Proxy Server and Do You Need One?
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What Is a Proxy Server and Do You Need One?
We write a lot about internet and personal device security here at PCMag, including tools you probably already know about and maybe use, like antivirus software and VPNs. But there are lesser-known methods of protection out there that you should know about, including proxy servers. We're here to tell you what proxy servers are, how they work, and why you might want to use one.To get more news about anonymous proxy, you can visit ip2world.com official website.
Proxy Servers, Defined
A proxy server is just what it sounds like. At its most basic, it's a server that sits between you and the rest of the internet, acting as a "proxy" for your traffic. Without a proxy, your computer or mobile device requests traffic from the web directly as it would on a standard connection. Adding a proxy server routes your request and the output of the website or service you're connecting to through an external server first. It adds one degree of separation between you and the site or service you want to connect with.
Say, for example, that you want to search for something on Google. On a non-proxied connection, your PC would make a data request directly to Google's servers, and Google's servers would then send the data back to your PC. When connecting via a proxy server, that request is passed through an external server and sent to Google. From there, the requested information is sent back through the proxy and finally to your PC.This added layer of traffic routing is used for a variety of reasons, including protecting your security and anonymity and spoofing your location to get access to geo-restricted content on the web.
What Is a Forward Proxy Server?
This is the most common type of proxy. Forward proxy servers work as we described above: Your information request is forwarded to the proxy server, passed through a firewall, and sent to the intended domain.
The domain then sends the information back to the proxy, which hands that data off to your device. Sometimes, the proxy server may already have the requested information cached in its database. If so, the request won't be forwarded to the domain, but the proxy server will deliver the data to your device directly from its own servers instead.What Is a Reverse Proxy Server?
A reverse proxy server, sometimes called a surrogate proxy, works in the opposite direction as a forward proxy. Instead of a user requesting data from the internet, a reverse proxy passes requests from the internet to users in an internal network. Larger websites and content delivery networks are the most common customers of reverse proxies, and users generally access these via the open internet over un-proxied connections.
Web domains and companies often use reverse proxies to monitor or restrict access to specific servers or parts of the web that an organization wants to prevent you from seeing. They can also be used by websites to obfuscate the actual location of an origin server (say, a website that illegally streams NFL games, for example) or to fend off DDoS for increased security and platform stability.There are a few dozen additional benefits to web servers using reverse proxies, but we won't bog you down with every use case here, as web domains or backend internet services mainly use them. The average web citizen doesn’t need to know about them unless they plan on running their own content servers. More often than not, you won't be able to tell if a website or server uses a reverse proxy, as the results on the client side typically look the same as a non-proxied web domain either way.