How Does A Proxy Server Work?

A proxy refers to a computer that acts as a gateway or intermediate or middleman between your computer and the online sources that you access. Proxies are also known as proxy servers or application-level gateways. When you visit a website online directly, the request that you make contains details about yourself, such as the server you are using, the PC, fingerprints of your browser, your location as well as your address, and many others. Once this data is shared with the website that you have visited, it populates data with the information you had requested.

A proxy will act as an intermediary between you and the server where it will adjust or hide your web information when communicating with a website allowing you to access the data without giving out too much information.  Proxy servers also allow you to access information that you would not have been able to access using a direct connection.

Proxies provide anonymity as you browse the internet. There are various proxy servers for sale that you can access on the internet. You can scour through the various sites to see the one that suits your needs. As you shop online, you need to remember; proxy servers have been divided into two categories. These are:

• Shared proxies and,
• Dedicated proxies

Shared Proxy

People easily access these types as they are public proxies. It is possible to get shared proxies for free, and they do not restrict the number of people connected to them. This results in slow connections as they get overloaded. Apart from lagging that can also arise, they also tend to crash often.

If this is your chosen proxy, you may need to wait a little longer for websites to load. This can be quite a headache when you are surfing the web. Using these shared websites can prove to be a risky thing as they could also be collecting your browser information.

Under shared proxies, you can look at semi-dedicated proxies as they connect to a limited number of users. If you run a company or school, this is an option that you can consider. You can invest in paid USA proxy servers in this case.

Dedicated Proxies

In this case, you get to use a proxy by yourself, which accords you more anonymity and keeps your information safe. The speed of loading a web page is also very fast.

How Proxies Work

Whenever you click on a link to visit any website online, you end up creating and submitting a web request. It is then forwarded to your proxy. Then the proxy server will adjust and encrypt your information such as the IP address. Once your data has been altered, the proxy server shares the information with the website.

The next step entails the proxy receiving data from the website, processing it, and delivering the web page to your computer. In this aspect, the proxy server acts as a firewall keeping your computer and information safe. The proxies can be based on any country depending on the proxy provider that you are using.