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Proxy Servers: A Modern Solution for Security, Speed, and Online Freedom

Proxy servers are used dozens of times per day by most people and they don't realize that they are using them. They reside between a device and the larger Internet, intercepting requests and deciding what to do with them, and then sending back a response — in the time it takes to flicker a webpage into being. At the simplest level a proxy server is an intermediary: your device does not communicate directly with a website, but with the proxy server, which communicates with the website for you. This little change in the architecture proves extremely handy. It enables organizations to keep its internal identities hidden, gives frequent travelers the ability to access content that's otherwise geographically inaccessible, and gives whole networks the ability to load common content faster by remembering what content has already been downloaded. Once a bit of networking oddity, Proxies are now one of the many tools that make a large percentage of the Internet faster and more private than it would be otherwise.

How Proxy Routing Works Today.

It is important to know what happens to a request when it leaves your device in order to grasp why proxies are important. Typically, the way the Internet works is that you go to a site and your computer sends a request to that site's server and the server replies directly to you, in a one-to-one transaction. A third party is inserted into that conversation—a proxy server. The request is sent to the proxy, which makes a request on behalf of you with its IP address and the response is then sent to the proxy and from there to you. The destination server thinks that the request is from the proxy server, and not your device.

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There is one mechanism which is the primary reason why people like proxies — IP masking. If the company is routing all employee traffic through the proxy server of their company, then the actual IPs of the workstations are hidden, with only the proxy's IP being visible by outside observers, and thus the amount of information an attacker can obtain by merely observing traffic is reduced. The masking effect also means that users can seemingly be surfing from an entirely different location, which is how a proxy server can circumvent geographical restrictions – the server enforcing geographical restrictions checks the IP address being used to make the request, and if the request is coming from a proxy server in a non-restricted area, then the block won't be triggered.

The mechanism that brings about speed increase is not the same: caching. Many proxies will cache certain content that is repeatedly requested, such as images, scripts, or even entire pages, so that requests by multiple users on the same network for the same content will be served from the proxy's cache rather than fetching the content each time from the original server. If dozens of employees in a corporate network are accessing the same internal wikipage or the same external news site during the day, this can significantly reduce the bandwidth consumed, as well as significantly improve load times. The idea is that it's the same sort of concept as a library having the popular books on the shelves rather than sending someone off to the archives every time someone wants a particular book.

These mechanisms are used in varying ways with different types of proxies. Forward proxies are located between client devices and handle traffic leaving the client, such as what businesses do to control employees access to the internet. Instead, reverse proxies are placed in front of servers, and are used to divide incoming traffic across multiple backend servers, which is commonly used to make high traffic sites where it is impossible for a single server to handle the load. Transparent proxies intercept traffic without requiring any configuration on the part of the user, and are often used to filter content on a school or workplace network, while anonymous and high-anonymity proxies are designed to conceal the user's use of a proxy, rather than to provide the user with a faster proxy, and are primarily used for privacy purposes.


Why Tech Bloggers go with Lightweight Frameworks to go over Network Security.

In short, anyone who writes about proxies, VPNs or network privacy is asking readers to rely on his/her technical expertise and that can be undermined if the site he/she's writing about is itself slow, cluttered or poorly protected.
  • The reading experience is the first place to begin establishing credibility: When a reader looks at a proxy review, they're implicitly trying to find out if the writer knows about performance and security; and an ad-heavy, slow page says no -- before they even finish reading the first sentence.
  • Heavy scripts are the polar opposite of the kind of audience that tech blogs are looking to target. Everyone who is concerned about privacy or wants to track the speed of their data connection or even network engineers and IT professionals disable trackers and blocking frameworks, and that's the type of person who will be turned off by a page that is bloated with unnecessary trackers.
  • Lightweight blogger themes minimize the technical burden that's battling your content. A minimal script layout, like Piki Templates (www.pikitemplates.com) is based on, has less background processes competing for bandwidth and rendering time with the script, which is very important when it comes to explaining something technical which already requires maximum concentration on the part of the reader.
  • Movement is a must have for technically minded movers. Many IT and security professionals read technical content on a phone, either on a commute or between meetings, and though the content may be correct, if it was not designed properly for viewing on smaller screens—tables cramped, code blocks that are difficult to read, bad navigation—then it doesn't matter how accurate the writing is.
  • SEO friendly templates like ‘Citron' and ‘Mag Paper' get content which is well researched, found! Search engines likes clean heading structures and quick loading times, and even a technically superb article on proxy configuration requires a well structured and SEO-friendly theme to ensure that it can be found on the pages where visitors looking for the topic of your article will find it.
  • The ad-friendly layouts are important for sustainability, and don't detract from readability. Many blogger adsense templates are created to arrange the ads without disrupting the code snippets, diagrams, step-by-step instructions, etc. so that technical writers can monetize their blog on a regular basis without compromising the teaching content.
  • The same engineering discipline that is being written about applies to your site: a fast, stable site. There is a natural disconnect between providing readers tips on network efficiency and security on a site that's not efficient or not using the latest, up-to-date security plugins — you're telling people to do what you don't.

How to optimize Content Hubs for high volumes of content

There are some topics that are particularly susceptible to sudden traffic spikes, such as proxy and privacy. Change in the data privacy rules, a big platform announcing geo-restrictions, or a popular tool going viral on social media can drive a wave of traffic to a niche review site in a matter of hours — visitors who come, read for a few seconds and then leave if the site doesn't load almost immediately. This area of sites should be designed for that pattern from the ground up and not retrofitted when getting hit with a traffic spike causes a site crash.

“It's where the theme underlying architecture really counts, outside of any security claims.” If your site is a lean, well-coded design such as 'Wind Spot' theme or another well-designed lightweight blogger template, it requires a lot less strain on the server resources during a traffic surge than a heavier CMS (plugin based) would. The fewer server-side processes that are required per page load, the less likely it is that a sudden surge of visitors will cause the site to slow down to a snail's pace, or hit the hosting limits, thus ensuring predictable hosting expenses even when traffic isn't. That stability could mean the difference between taking advantage of a viral moment and seeing the majority of that traffic disappear because a site broke under the weight of it all, for an independent creator or small publishing team that doesn't have their own DevOps expert that you can call at a drop of a hat. A fast and stable hub also has a tendency of retaining users longer in a session, and when that is coupled with sensible, non-intrusive ads, it means that users, who aren't frustrated by a slow page experience, will read more than one article, thus creating a steady stream of revenue over time.

How the Web will be securely navigated in the future.

Expectations for data privacy are continually increasing, and the seemingly disjointed landscape of content restrictions by region is not becoming more straightforward. In fact, proxy servers as a part of the greater privacy toolset of which they are a part will continue to matter for exactly the same reason that they continue to matter: they provide a way to control what the rest of the internet can see and reach about you — and fast. The same goes for all the writers writing about these tools: the internet as a whole relies on smart routing and solid encryption, and so does its content — it's got to be just as fast, clean and accessible as the technology itself.
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Meet the Author
Dev Manu Dhiman
I am an online content professional and blogger, who offers useful information, materials and advice to advance your internet life. I post only the best pieces of content carefully chosen due to the extensive research that I conducted on thousands of tools, platforms, and resources, which I share on this blog. I want to be able to fix the issue that bothers people on the internet and I want you to be successful in whatever you are trying to do, be it create a web site, engage in the world of digital opportunities, or make your blogging experience the one you enjoy.
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