it gets very confusing with all the terms.....i would recommend you have a
look at the squid docs, there is a good explanation of things there. the
granddaddy of them all is the internet firewalls book from ora.
in general, TRADITIONAL terms.....masq is form of proxy, caching is not
proxy
a proxy server sits between 2 networks and each side thinks its talking to
the other while its actually talking to the proxy. it is common for the
proxy to translate protocols as well. this is handy if you are trying to get
non-routable protocols to talk to each other like netbui (m$) or ipx to talk
tcpip to talk to the internet. by changing from routable to nonroutable you
have added a layer to your security, though a weak one if the proxy is
compromised. it can be transparent or visible relative to the clients.
masquerading is a form of proxy
typically caching is not by itself a proxy. the cache is used to reduce
latency. web caching like squid is an example of it. the cache can be
transparent (is the clients don;t even know its there) and feed documents on
demand or the clients can be configured to communicate with it as if it were
a proxy to get its information. it can be configured to behave like a proxy
in the clients eyes. since the proxy is handling all the infomation, its not
much more overhead (sans disk space ) to save the web pages for example for
a period of time.
commonly, we use masquerading and network address translation to do some
clever things. lets say we only get one ip number from our isp and we want
to share it with a number of computers. ie address conservation. the
internal network may use a different protocol or address range. masq then on
the fly will modify and substitute the external and internal address
information with its own to be the go between the two networks. by adding in
a rules set of some kind, like who can go where, be it internal or external
we get a firewall. it can be as simple as defining network routes, allowing
protocols or services by username/ip numbers, or actually analysing the
packet info and parsing out the source/dest. info.
have a look at
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-05/lw-05-ramparts.html
hope this helps
dennis
----- Original Message -----
From: adhak
Dear all,
Can somebody tell me the difference between a proxy server and Masquerading. Although, they both seem similar in their primary function however, I usually see Proxy servicing as Masquerading plus Caching. What do you think of this? Thanks for all your comments and advices.
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