I access the internet through a internet service provider and I am told that it uses proxy servers. What are proxy servers and why can’t I just go into Netscape and select ‘direct connection to the internet’? Sometimes the ’server’ is very slow or not working at all. Can I work around this?

Proxy servers are servers that act as a ‘go-between’ your computer and the whole internet. They normally cache pages that other users have requested and then after a certain period of time, dump them because they are outdated. Cache is a place on computers where recent and frequently requested files (in this case internet pages) are stored so that it is much faster to access them locally instead of having to venture onto the internet to receive them. In Netscape if you do not use proxy servers then you will not be able to retrieve pages off the internet. This is because the proxy servers retrieve your browser pages. Proxy’s do sometimes go down and there is not much you can do about this because it is your ISP’s responsibility. The best thing to do is send a email to your ISP notifying them of this with the date and time of when the proxy went down. Then you should log off the internet and log back on about 10 minutes later by which time the proxy server should be back up. (Most servers have automated software to correct errors and apply appropriate measures eg. rebooting the proxy server and/or software).