i dont understand proxy servers and stuff, what do they do? and why would i use them.. i tried looking it up but its all jargon to me.. can sumone explain please?!?! cheers
a proxy is effectively a server that you can 'sort of' hide behind, they're mainly used in offices and business whereby when you ask for something in your browser the request is fed via the proxy server first. Many of these have a huge cache area a bit like your local pc where pages are stored for viewing later. If the page you're looking for already exists on the proxy server then there's no need to go and get it again from the outside world. The information is simply fed down from the proxy server to your machine thus saving from eating up more bandwidth going to get the information many times over for each person. The main reason to have them is for security reasons. They act as a gateway between the network inside a business and the outside world wide web. Normally placed behind a firewall for added security, hackers and downloaders most commonly use proxies to get around file sharing limits and download limits from sites like rapidshare and those kind of sites. Some can be totally anonymous whereby you can hop on and use them at your own free will, others will need you to register. The downside of the free anonymous proxies on the web is that it will somtimes slow down your performance as many of the free ones are located outside of the UK so if you're retrieving info from UK websites it will take longer.... hope that isn't too nerdy an explanation for everyone.
