What is a proxy?
In: Technology
Without a proxy, when you use your browser to request a web page, you send a message directly to the web page’s server, and it sends a response directly back to you.
With a proxy, your browser sends that message to the proxy server, and the proxy server figures out what to send back to you. Normally, it contacts the web server you’re trying to reach and forwards the response to you, but it can also store that response for future requests, or manipulate what it decides to send back to you.
Why would you want to use a proxy server? Well, suppose you are running a business. You have 1000 computers in the building. Every person in your office is browsing reddit. They’re all downloading the same dank memes. Suppose the top story on Reddit is a 100MB video. Without a proxy server, each of your 1000 users is going to download that same 100MB file. That single file is going to end up using 100GB of your company’s internet bandwidth.
But, if you have a proxy server to cache the media, it is going to save a copy of that file when the first person downloads it. When the other 999 users try to download the same video, the proxy server is going to send them the copy that it has previously saved. Your users all receive their dank memes, but you only use 100MB of bandwidth instead of 100GB. Repeat for every other piece of commonly-accessed content, and you can quickly save tens of thousands of dollars on your internet costs.
Proxy servers are also used to filter content, such as ads, or porn. When a web page asks your browser to request an ad, the proxy filter intercepts the request, and blocks the ad from downloading.
Proxy servers can also disguise the ultimate recipient of content, so that the web server doesn’t know who is actually receiving it. They know the IP address of the proxy server, but not the end user. So if you’re in Europe and you’re trying to access a web page that complies with the GDPR by blocking European visitors, you can get potentially get around that block by using a US proxy.
If you’re interested in this technology, Try “Pi Hole”, a proxy server built to run on a Raspberry Pi, and used to block ads. “Squid” is another popular one that can be configured in a variety of ways. Apache, NGinx, and most other web servers can also be configured for various kinds of proxying.
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