How often is authenticated SOCKS5 used as an HTTP proxy in organizations?

Question

I'm wondering how frequently organisations use SOCKS5 as their web proxy protocol over, say, HTTP or authenticated HTTP proxies.

Should an application even bother supporting SOCKS5 as an HTTP proxy? What percentage of organisations use SOCKS as a HTTP proxy?

If you work in an organisation where you use SOCKS5, particularly authenticated SOCKS5, as the means of achieving HTTP Internet connectivity I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. If you have experience with requirements for SOCKS5 proxies in your software I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

Answer 1

To my current research most of the top used browsers IE, FF and opera dont support socks 5 authentication, so forget any enterprise using socks5 as a server.

Since without authentication a proxy server has no use in an enterprise.

FF supports socsks4/5 without authentication.

IE supports only socks4.