VDict mobile



networking A computer and associated software which will
pass on a request for a URL from a World-Wide Web
browser such as Mosaic to an outside server and return the
results. This provides clients that are sealed off from the
Internet a trusted agent that can access the Internet on
their behalf. Once the client is properly configured, its
user should not be aware of the proxy gateway.
A proxy gateway often runs on a firewall machine. Its main
purpose is to act as a barrier to the threat of crackers.
It may also be used to hide the IP addresses of the
computers inside the firewall from the Internet if they do
not use official registered network numbers.
Browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape can be configured to
use a different proxy or no proxy for each URL access method
(or "scheme") - FTP, Gopher, WAIS, news, and HTTP.
Compare proxy server.
(1997-06-08)