Proxy Server Configuration

[djdesi]

Hey Guyz,
I need ur help..... I have a direct internet connection and using that I want to run a proxy server with my pc............. So how to do that???
just tell me what are the tools and apps required precisely!

Thanx in advance for all the help that i will get... Will appreciate that...

[jason]

What is it that you want to use this proxy server for? The term "proxy server" can sometimes have several different meanings, so knowing what you want to do will help in assisting you.

--JAson

[djdesi]

Thanx for the reply....

I want to give internet access to all the 5 pc's at my place.... Cache the sites and by pass the for thos SPECIAL SITES...

PS: Sorry for the late reply...

[Connie]

I'm not to tech smart. If I understand what you want to do you should be able to do that by setting up a network. Here is what I understand you to be saying. I have 5 PCs that I want to connect to the Internet using one ISP connection.

Maybe you need to go into a little more detail about what you are trying to accomplish.

[jason]

If you are running Windows (anything since Me, I believe), the easiest thing to do is set up Internet Connection Sharing on the computer that will have the interface to the outside world. I'm not sure, however, if ICS allows for caching. (I've never used it, I just know its there.) The advantage of this method is that you don't need to do anything special to your other computers. The ICS box will serve as a router (you'll specify that as the default gateway in your other computers' network settings and be done).

What kind of connection to the outside do you have? If you are on a broadband connection you should consider just buying a router. A simple wired router these days goes for next to nothing--probably in the $25 area and wireless routers start at around $50 (if you have any laptops or you don't want to run cable through your house). Then you won't need any special software setups to get it running. This is what I do at my place and it works great.

If you aren't using broadband or windows, then consider a socks server. There are several other them available (such as this one). It'll take a little more work to get it running and you'll probaly have to set up every program on any of the other computers to tunnel through this machine (you've seen the "proxy settings" in the connection settings for nearly every network app, I'm sure).

If you have an old computer "doorstop" lying around you should consider setting that up as a router. There are some free, small Linux distros out there (such as this one) that are meant for doing this on a dedicated machine. If you run the router/proxy on a machine that you are using for other purposes you may likely see a performance hit on all of your systems if the machine that shares the connection is extremely busy and a hit on the connection sharing machine if the rest of your network is busy.

I hope this helps you out. Good luck with whatever you decided. Let me know if I can be of more assistance.

--Jason