Originally posted here by ammo
Hey there... (hopefully for you by now you're well asleep

First let me clarify about proxies... Proxies don't exactly just retransmit with its own ip (that would be the definition of NAT -Network Adress Translation- "server". A proxy instead accepts direct connections from the client application (ex: Inernet Explorer). The proxy server then establishes a connection to the end server you are actually trying to reach. It the relays the information between the client connection and the server connection. In order to be able to do that, the proxy has to know the protocol the client app uses (ex: IE uses http, the proxy must know http for this to work, hence an http proxy).

So if you've had enough sleep, you'll understand that you need a different proxy server for each application you use (one physical server (one computer) might be running many different proxies).

There is however another kind of proxy, called a Socks (4 or 5) proxy that can relay pretty much any protocol but its more complicated to explain! (Client applications have to explicitly support socks proxies for this to work...)

Back to your question, it seems to me that you're trying to "anonymize" your connections. If this is right, I don't think (haven't heard of) public proxies for other that http and ftp...
There are always users who run proxy software (like wingate) that unknowingly leave there proxies open. But this is -illiegal-.

Anyways, hope this clarified things a bit for you..


Ammo
ok, yeah, very helpful (even tho i only got 4 hours of sleep which isnt like me, im going back to sleep again after this). ok so how does the XP network just relay my TCP/IP requests? i dont have to configure GAIM for a Socks proxy or anything, it just seems to relay whatever requests i send out. hmmmmmm interesting tho. thanks alot Ammo really useful info on the proxys.

also thanks for the links, i havent looked them over to widely but i dont think that it what i was quite looking for, im broke and i think they want money so...... but thanks anyway