Life and times behind a proxy server..
Being a college student and blessed with full time access to the internet (read 21 hours) is great considering the speeds that you get and the relatively nothing that you pay for it. But as in most cases, the connection to the internet is not direct but through a proxy server. A highly restrictive proxy server at that. From our experiences so far, i can say with certainity that only port 80 will be open at any given point of time. (I think i maybe wrong but as far as i know, this is the case). And so, the admins think/feel that we students should use the internet for only useful purposes and have thus blocked everything else you can think of that can make one's online life complete in today's world(especially if you are into watching movies or generally downloading stuff off the net) like downloading from torrents, connecting to p2p networks like kazaa or edonkey and why, even messengers!! Yahoo messenger doesnt connect on its default port but its been designed to seek out open ports that it can use. Alas, thats not the case with gaim. It can connect only thorugh a given port which you need to specify and cant search for open ports. Amd this forces those of us who use gaim to resort to other means to get it working. Tunneling...
Most of us use this software called Your Freedom which manages to route data supposed to be sent on any port through port 80 and thus, practically, opens up the whole internet for you irrespective of what the proxy server is capable of. But as it is a free service, the speeds are good enough only for connecting to the instant messenger servers and gives too low speeds with torrents and p2p networks (around 3 kbps which is almost nothing). So, the guys at the helm have pretty much achieved their objective. I guess there is some way to find out what port a given program is using on windows. If only we were somehow able to figure out what port yahoo messenger uses to connect to the yahoo servers, life will be a lot more painless for us guys who prefer gaim :)
And because of the same proxy servers, the adventerous few of us who want to be able to test the latest versions of open source softwares using cvs (or darcs in case of psi) cant do so very easily. again, the need to find a way to get around these (stupid) proxy servers. Help is at hand in the form of Proxy chains :)..from what i have understood, it links up your computer to the external server through a series of proxy servers and again, our proxy servers are so configured that proxychains cant use them. We need to resort to your-freedom for bailing us out again. So far, so good..They have worked well in tandem :)
And as usual, some bad sites have been blocked...and also ones like Cricinfo which are used by many to keep track of cricket scores but hog bandwidth many a time. Though one will easily realise that the methodology of blocking is not very effective and breaks down completely many a time. even if not, we have the services of anonymous proxy sites (a huge list of which can be found here) to get us through. These sites basically work on converting letters into numbers and hexadecimal code which cant be blocked as easily as blocking the alphabetical versions.
All in all, its quite a learning experience being behind a proxy server..Extensions like Switch Proxy let one lead a lot more easier life when faced with a situation of multiple proxy servers, any of which might work at a given time while the rest dont or one gives very good speeds compared to the others. Open source is simply too good a philosophy :D
Interestingly, i know of atleast one college in India which is pretty new and has net connectivity to all its hostel residents but doesnt have a proxy server at all!! Direct connection to the internet is what i gather from talking to two of my friends over there. I find it strange how they are letting it be still even after almost 2 years of inception. But then they stop it from working from 9AM-5PM to make sure students attend classes. So, i guess its a good bargain after all!!
Most of us use this software called Your Freedom which manages to route data supposed to be sent on any port through port 80 and thus, practically, opens up the whole internet for you irrespective of what the proxy server is capable of. But as it is a free service, the speeds are good enough only for connecting to the instant messenger servers and gives too low speeds with torrents and p2p networks (around 3 kbps which is almost nothing). So, the guys at the helm have pretty much achieved their objective. I guess there is some way to find out what port a given program is using on windows. If only we were somehow able to figure out what port yahoo messenger uses to connect to the yahoo servers, life will be a lot more painless for us guys who prefer gaim :)
And because of the same proxy servers, the adventerous few of us who want to be able to test the latest versions of open source softwares using cvs (or darcs in case of psi) cant do so very easily. again, the need to find a way to get around these (stupid) proxy servers. Help is at hand in the form of Proxy chains :)..from what i have understood, it links up your computer to the external server through a series of proxy servers and again, our proxy servers are so configured that proxychains cant use them. We need to resort to your-freedom for bailing us out again. So far, so good..They have worked well in tandem :)
And as usual, some bad sites have been blocked...and also ones like Cricinfo which are used by many to keep track of cricket scores but hog bandwidth many a time. Though one will easily realise that the methodology of blocking is not very effective and breaks down completely many a time. even if not, we have the services of anonymous proxy sites (a huge list of which can be found here) to get us through. These sites basically work on converting letters into numbers and hexadecimal code which cant be blocked as easily as blocking the alphabetical versions.
All in all, its quite a learning experience being behind a proxy server..Extensions like Switch Proxy let one lead a lot more easier life when faced with a situation of multiple proxy servers, any of which might work at a given time while the rest dont or one gives very good speeds compared to the others. Open source is simply too good a philosophy :D
Interestingly, i know of atleast one college in India which is pretty new and has net connectivity to all its hostel residents but doesnt have a proxy server at all!! Direct connection to the internet is what i gather from talking to two of my friends over there. I find it strange how they are letting it be still even after almost 2 years of inception. But then they stop it from working from 9AM-5PM to make sure students attend classes. So, i guess its a good bargain after all!!
posted by Ganesh at 8:11 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home