Design and Implementation of a Proxy Server (prOxC)

Abstract

A Proxy Server is a server that is placed insid e a network domain and works as a gatekeeper. This server listens to all web requests that are made by any of the cl ients inside the domain. It then communicates with the desired web server that is outside this LAN domain (or another proxy server) and sends these requests. The web server or another proxy communicate only with this proxy and transfer the data desired by the actual client. The proxy is then respon sib le to deliver this data to the requesting client. Proxy servers play a useful role for monitoring the web usage of a LAN. Since it is the only application inside a LAN that is supposed to get all incoming data and outgoing requests, a proxy can easily maintain log files for each user's web session. This feature makes the network admini stration very easy. Basic idea behind prOxC was to make a proxy server with data rate quota for all users, banning of unwanted web sites and logging based on Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 domain users irrespective of machine IP. A machine with an lP is visible to all other machines of all platforms in a LAN. All such machines can also use prOxC and quota, banning and logging is maintained for them using their IPs. This is a multithreaded socket application that uses Windows NetAPl fu nctions for communication with T domain controllers, and MFC for handling sockets and threads, string translation from UNICODE to ASCII and vise versa and the user interface.