Talk:Proxy server

Reorganisation
I think that this whole page could be cleaned up by sorting it into more defined and specific areas. At the moment it reads a lot more like a collection of peoples ideas. I am surprised that this page does not discuss or provide links to transport layer proxies, often known as PEPs (Performance Enhancing Proxies).

I think that the whole article could be better arranged by organising the information on this page into three distinct sections: Anonymizing web proxies, Packet Caching/Content filtering web proxies and, PEPs (Performance Enhancing Proxies)

Roy muzz (talk) 00:29, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

What Does A Proxy Do? Here You Write The Answer Down. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ansariibrahim (talk • contribs) 04:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Technical information
I'd like to add a section that explains some technical information about connecting to proxies. Most namely, how to use the CONNECT method of HTTP. Reference RFC 2817.

Plagiarism claim not correct
In this edit, it was claimed that the lead in the current article is plagiarized from here. However, that page is dated March 30, 2009 and the history shows that similar text has been in the lead of the Wikipedia article long before that date. In other words, it is extremely likely that the other website took the text from here. For example, here are some old versions of this article: December 31, 2008 and February 26, 2009. Johnuniq (talk) 10:19, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Proxy Help
Okay, I didn't exactly get my answer when reading this. Say that you're IP Address-banned from a website. Can you use a proxy to use the site again? 66.60.210.32 (talk) 07:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes --h2g2bob (talk) 02:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Made some large edits
I've been making some big changes, mostly moving sections about. I've tried to split it into "what's it used for" and "how does it work". For reference, [ this] is the article before I started editing it. --h2g2bob (talk) 02:41, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Percentages don't add up
"Most web filtering companies use an internet-wide crawling robot that assesses the likelihood that a content is a certain type (e.g. "This content is 70% chance of porn, 40% chance of sports, and 30% chance of news" could be the outcome for one web page)" this makes 140%. Tyzoid (talk) 12:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess the extra 40% is from news relating to sexy sports stars :) There's no reference on that section, and it could do with some tlc, so re-write (or remove) stuff which doesn't make sense. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:31, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Unwilling/unknowing Proxies the Result of Malware/Infection?
From reading around on the internet, I get the general idea that one purpose of the distribution of infection/malware is to create a " 'botnet". I wonder if it is correct to describe the elements within the 'botnet as "proxies", and if so shouldn't they be mentioned here? Also the general connection (if any) between malware and proxies. At this point, the article seems to deal with proxies as if the proxy were a knowing and willing participant, and it is my sense that many are not.Jonny Quick (talk) 01:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)Jonny Quick


 * I don't think botnets are strictly used as a proxy: they do more than just forward requests (like denial of service). When distributing malware, I guess they would work by store-and-forward rather than proxying requests to a canonical server as you could trace the canonical server by watching traffic sent through any computer in the botnet. When they attack other machines, it's mostly automated (afaik).
 * The botnet owner could use botnet machines as a proxy: this would hide his real ip address (for example, if he wanted to attack a particular server by hand).
 * You're right that not all proxies are willing participants. This would also include legitimate proxies which have been mis-configured. --h2g2bob (talk) 15:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 5 January 2012
"In 2009 security a flaw..." should be "In 2009 a security flaw..."

Mario I Rossi (talk) 04:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, now . Thanks! Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 10:13, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Very little description of legalities of proxy servers
Users will understand how it works with a simple diagram. More focus is needed on the legalities of proxy server. e.g: where it is legal and where it is not legal. Do this and your article can easily become a B class article.--WOLfan112 (talk) 18:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)


 * That's probably a good idea, but the request edit template is for use when you have a conflict of interest and have text ready to add. I have therefore deactivated it. SmartSE (talk) 17:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge Reverse proxy into this article?
Closing this discussion - no consensus for merge. Deb (talk) 09:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

The Reverse proxy article is very short and appears to have been mainly used as a vehicle for promotion of commercial software (and, perhaps, some open-source packages). I think a merge/redirect would allow better explanation of the subject material and better use of editors' time. &mdash; UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 03:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge Sephiroth storm (talk) 02:43, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Do not merge: It is a special type of a proxy and deserves a separate article. A merger would also alongate the already long article of proxies. --Sae1962 (talk) 07:56, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Copyright restrictions
This article does not mention the use of proxy servers to bypass copyright restrictions imposed by Google books and similar venues. That is, it would appear that if you live in Japan, Gooogle books imposes Japanese copyright restrictions to all items in their library, regardless of the country of origin of the item. Similarly, British copyright restrictions, or German, which may not match US restrictions on the exact same items. So US viewers can see items that Italian viewers cannot, and perhaps vice versa for all I know. Could someone with a greater knowledge of this, add this to this article.Wjhonson (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Name and history
Does anybody knows where the name "proxy" comes from? And its history? It would be nice to add it to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.201.164.115 (talk) 16:55, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Do not ask others to do your research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.163.86.58 (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Shared IP address
I searched wikipedia for Shared IP address and found it was redirecting here to Proxy server. However, because this page says nothing about shared addresses I changed the redirect to IP address. Could an informed editor expand that section to better explain what a shared address is and how they are used? Is there any connection with proxy servers? I came across the term when looking at web hosting offers. -84user (talk) 12:53, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think "shared IP address" has any special meaning beyond the meaning of the words that make it up, that is an IP address that is in some way shared. The meaning of the term "shared" will depend on the context. In the context of a hosting service it would mean an IP address that is shared between multiple domains (see []). In the context of clients it would mean an IP address that is shared by multiple client systems (though either proxies or NAT). Plugwash (talk) 14:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Proxy server translating computer language
I tried to find information about use of proxy server to translate from one computer language to another (it should be a better way to explain this...). For instance, see Apigee's API proxy server, which acts as a proxy for requests: a user/application connects to the server translating from SOAP API to a RESTful API. Would it be correct to include this as a type of proxy server in the article, or is this not considered a proxy server (what else then)? Hyperkobling (talk) 23:43, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

"Web proxy servers" vs. "CGI proxy" and vs. "Suffix proxy"
Why are "Web proxy servers" presented as a different type than "CGI proxy" and "Suffix proxy"? Aren't the latter two just the two main examples of the former? -20:21, 12 May 2017 (UTC).

Virtual hosting as use case for Reverse proxies
Isn't one of the main use cases for Reverse proxies virtual hosting? Why isn't it mentioned in this article at all? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.213.19.14 (talk) 14:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Helpful
Good thoughts!!! Dnjp31 (talk) 03:06, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Removal of Proposed Section Added to Existing Proxy Server Article
At 14:40 on 21 July MrOllie removed an addition titled "Rotating Proxies," saying that Wikipedia doesn't use blogs as sources for the type of information I was citing. (I had included inline citations to a self-published blog.) WP:RS helps me understand this. Now I want to ask if the two citations I had made, to define a rotating proxy and an elite-anonymity proxy, are necessary at all. That's because in the existing "Proxy Server" article I find definitions of these terms by other contributors which, without inline citation, apparently meet the reliability standard. One is the opening paragraphs, which define a proxy, and the only thing I add to that in my proposed addition is that IP addresses may rotate. As to anonymity, the subsection titled "Access control" includes the definition of "elite or high-anonymity proxies" which I was also attempting to add.

Might I rely on these internal definitions which already meet editorial standards? That is, what if I re-added my section on rotating proxies without any inline citations? This would provide the information on rotating and elite proxies without any suggestion of self-promotion by the blog. What would other Wikipedia users say? Doubtnot93 (talk) 23:15, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

What's "load balancing"?
It's not linked to any other articles, or defined in this one. Azbookmobile (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It's not linked in the lead, but it is linked in the rest of the article. I don't see why it shouldn't be linked in the lead, given what the lead of MOS:LEAD says, so I've linked it there as well. Guy Harris (talk) 03:13, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Article is incorrect when referencing different types of proxies
A "proxy" server is just the shortened name for "web proxy". There are NO proxies that exist that proxy traffic other than http/s and FTP traffic, so everywhere where the articles references different types for different traffic is incorrect. This is a common misconception with people who did not start their career in the 90s when "web" proxies first came out. Back then they were referred to as web proxies but over time it was shortened to just "proxy". Due to this, a lot of youngsters aren't aware of this, and assume that it proxies all traffic. If you doubt what I say, here is a question to answer yourself: Think of ANY application you have ever used, and think where you configure proxy details, can you think of one app that uses SMTP, SMB or any other protocol and you configure it with proxy details? The answer is no. The only type of apps where you can specify proxy details are browsers, FTP apps, or other apps that use http/s for its communication. This should be enough for you to realise that proxies don't exist for other protocols. Even reverse proxies only work with http/s. Any traffic that comes in over a different protocol is either handled by a load balancer or firewall, some of which are layer 7 aware, but these are not proxies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.200.24.25 (talk) 02:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but is there some text in the article that is incorrect? There must have been cases where someone has made, for example, a telnet proxy and in principle a proxy for many protocols could be constructed. The concept of a proxy is what the introductory sentence says. Johnuniq (talk) 04:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)