Think of this IP address as your computer’s street address. How Does a Proxy Server Operate?Įvery computer on the internet needs to have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) Address. Lastly, proxy servers can provide a high level of privacy. A good proxy server keeps users and the internal network protected from the bad stuff that lives out in the wild internet.
Proxy servers act as a firewall and web filter, provide shared network connections, and cache data to speed up common requests. Modern proxy servers do much more than forward web requests, all in the name of data security and network performance. If that’s all it does, why bother with a proxy server? Why not just go straight from to the website and back? The request then comes back through that same proxy server (there are exceptions to this rule), and then the proxy server forwards the data received from the website to you.
If you’re using a proxy server, traffic flows through the proxy server on its way to the address you requested. Proxy servers provide varying levels of functionality, security, and privacy depending on your use case, needs, or company policy. It’s an intermediary server separating end-user clients from the destinations that they browse. "It's a new world of remote work and this was a jumpstart on securing it."Ī proxy server is any machine that translates traffic between networks or protocols.