Proxy Server

A 'Proxy' is another word for 'Substitute'.

Imagine you have become a multi-millionaire overnight. All the world's press want to know your story. Instead of handling all this yourself, you hire a 'public relations' professional

You tell her what you want to say and she will present your story to the press in the best light. On the other hand, she will also reject unwanted interviews, thus saving you the hassle.

She is your 'Proxy'.

The Proxy Server.

This machine has the two main tasks:

	Supply authorised internal users with web pages
	Supply external users with authorised information and services.

Quite often staff tend to use the same web sites over and over again. So to speed up access and reduce bandwidth costs, the Proxy server will keep a local copy of the web pages and serve these to the user instead.

Of course rules running on the proxy server will determine how often these local pages need to be updated.

The proxy server also acts as a filter:

	Prevents unauthorised users from accessing external networks such as the internet.
	Prevents unauthorised web sites to be accessed (stops time wasting!)
	Provides a web service to external clients, but does not allow them through to the internal network itself. For example a bank web site would be running a proxy service.

In a way, the proxy server is the outward facing aspect of the company linked to the internet.