A proxy server is a server used to share an internet connection.
Internet Connection Sharing is the act of intercepting an Internet connection so that every computer on your local area network can access it.
There are three ways to access this Internet connection through an intermediary. These are:
(1) – ICS (Internet Connection Sharing Service)
(2) – Nat (Network Address Translation Service)
(3) Proxy Server.
The best of the three is the proxy server. Because there seem to be a lot of reasons.
Vulnerabilities of other methods are not found on the proxy server, and most of the capabilities of the proxy server are not available in any other way.
If you use ICS Internet Connection Sharing Service, you will be able to connect up to 254 computers in our network.
This is because if you run the ICS Service and use the Internet Connection Sharing method, the computers in our LAN will only be able to access addresses within 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254 / Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0 because the ICS Service defaults to its local network address as 192.168.0.0 by default.
We have no right to modify it, and Ics Service does not control network traffic.
Of course, NAT (Network Address Translation Service) can also share the Internet, and it is even better than the Ics service, which allows you to manually assign an IP address to its local network, and the Nat service includes the Basic Firewall function, which makes your local network more secure.
But the downside to Ics Services is that it has no control over network traffic.
So what about our protagonist Proxy Server? Yes Proxy Server
There are many advantages, and the proxy server solves the impossibility of the two services. And the proxy server is like the computers in your local network on Ics and NAT
Websites have been shut down because they are no longer connected directly to the Internet, but only through a port provided by the Web proxy service on the proxy server.
You can also set custom security permissions, such as which computers on the local network do not want to access the Internet, and when Internet clients will be able to do so.
In addition, as soon as a client computer on the local network calls a website, the proxy server temporarily stores that website in its cache. From then on, if another client operator retrieves the same website from a proxy server within a specified period of time or before the specified cache volume is reached, the proxy server will control the network traffic and speed up the Internet speed.
You can see which websites were accessed by client computers on your local network in the log file on the proxy server. You can also set your computer to access the Internet on your local network by knowing the specified username and password.
However, if you need to use a server that shares your internet connection, you should first think of a proxy server.