Re: Household proxy
G'day
>This is probably a dumb question, but exactly what is proxy, how does it
>differ from IP masquerading and why would one use it instead of IP masq?
Nah, no such thing as a dumb question! That's why the list is here :)
Basically, with the growth of the internet, getting more than 1 IP address
is getting particularly difficult (they're almost impossible to get in
Australia). So most ppl use IP addresses on their local network that can't
be routed onto the net, like the 10.0.0.0 subnet.
So, as these can't be routed onto the net, none of the machines on your LAN
can access the net, only your gateway (your machine with the modem) can. To
get around this you can do thwo things...
1. Install a proxy server.
A proxy server caches content. Basically netscape on any computer on the
LAN can talk to the gateway computer, and the gateway computer can talk to
the net. So Netscape asks the proxy for a file, and the proxy goes out and
gets it, then gives it to netscape... Everything you do must be done thru
the proxy. This is inconvienent because a lot of things don't work well
with proxy servers.
2. Use IP Masquerading.
IP masq is, like the proxy, installed on the gateway computer. Unlike the
proxy tho, it allows all the machines on the LAN to access the net without
a proxy, as if they were directly connected. It does this by looking at all
the IP packets that go thru, and remembering who asked for what, and making
sure it gets delivered back to the right place when it gets back.
Hope some of that made sense... You can use both if you like, as a proxy
tends to work well with web browsers. IP Masq tends to be more transparent,
but is conceptually a little more different to understand, so a lot of ppl
tend to get discouraged. In reality, everything is safely hidden from the
end user, and it's pretty easy to get working...
Hope that went some of the way towards explaining it...
damon
========
Damon Muller (damon@lenore.empire.net.au)
Web Page: www.sub.net.au/~tr It's not a sense of humor. It's
ICQ UIN: 2920281 a sense of irony disguised as one.
PGP Key ID: 0x232C09E1 - Bruce Sterling
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