Proxy question

[cerberus6]

What are the advantages/disadvantages of connecting through a proxy? I've been told that going through a proxy server sometimes increases your connection speed, and increases your chances of remaining somewhat annonimous on the net. Where I'm at, @Home has it's address as just "proxy" using port "1080". Security wise, should I not use this proxy server?

[DVNT1]

A proxy server often caches incoming Web pages on it's hard disk and/or RAM. If the next page requested by a browser is already in the proxy cache, the page is retrieved locally (relatively) instead of from the original server on the Internet.
This can be a good thing for speed and anonymity. The downside is that the cache can become outdated (like news pages) quickly so you don't always get the newest content from the original site. This is what can seperate good proxy servers from poor ones.
I'd suggest trying that proxy server and see how your results are.

[cerberus6]

Thanks for the info. I tried using @home's proxy server, but it seemed a bit slow. Well, it's even slow now without it, thanks to this Code Red Worm situation. I hope this blows over soon...it's driving me crazy.

[psyklone]

not all proxies are caching proxies. those that are will (in some cases) serve pages up a bit faster if they're already cached. however you have a cable connection already so the only time you'd really notice much of a difference anyway is if the latency problem is on the website that you're connecting to. if the site's already cached locally on a caching proxy then the proxy will feed you the content instead of having to pull it down from the remote site.

by nature, though, any proxy is a help in terms of anonymity. most places that run a proxy that, knowingly or unknowingly, provide public proxy access do log access. if you try anything tricky while proxied that would trigger an investigation, a quick search through the proxy logs will show the actual address you connected to the proxy from complete with timestamp and everything.

just fyi ....

cheers,

psyklone

[This message has been edited by psyklone (edited 08-08-2001).]

[cerberus6]

Thanks psyklone. I was more curious about speed rathar than annonymity anyways. I figured logs would certainly be available if need be by administrators or law enforcement.