Definition Of Proxy

The idea of proxy is used with reference to the agent who is authorized to carry out an action on behalf of another entity. The term is often used in the field of computing to refer to the server that, in a network, acts as an intermediary when a client requests resources from a server.

Proxy

The proxy server, or simply proxy, allows to register and control traffic, guarantees that communication is anonymous, and contributes to optimizing performance, for example. In some cases, however, the use of a proxy is considered illegitimate.

A proxy, in short, is a mediator or a link. Suppose a computer A needs to request a resource to a computer C. If it does through a B server, this is responsible for moving the application to C, which C does not record that the original request came from A. As can be seen as expressed above, in this case, server B is the proxy server.

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In practice, the proxy is dedicated to intercepting the connections that are made from a client to a destination server. When browsing the World Wide Web, in this framework, the web proxy appears.

The proxy, in turn, can be local (the requesting client itself looks for the interception, thus allowing the establishment of filtering rules) or external (the implementation of the proxy is decided by an external entity).

The notion of proxy is also used in other contexts. A climatic proxy, also called a paleoclimatic indicator, is a record of biophysical peculiarities of the past that is used to measure meteorological conditions and thus serves to reconstruct the climatic characteristics of historical moments.

A proxy variable, finally, is a statistical variable that is not attributed to an interest in itself but is important in making it possible to obtain others of greater interest through a correlation with the inferred value.

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