What is proxy server exactly. What its purpose ?
A:
there are two types of firewall: packet filters and proxies.
A proxy can have many purposes. Essentially it's a gateway that can restrict and/or log network accesses.
Maybe you're the admin of a network and you want to monitor the web traffic being accessed by company employees.
In that case you might have your client computers configured such that their web browsers / other apps are configured to access the internet through the proxy.
The proxy can then log what is being accessed - and by whom.
Proxies like squid specialise in caching frequently accessed network resources, in order to reduce bandwidth consumption.
There are many other uses, these are just a few. Hope this helps!
freefallr
2010-09-01 12:53:07