Global proxy setup for Windows Vista

[ProclaimDragon]

I have Internet through my University and at home. At home, I have direct Internet access but at the University, I must use their proxies. So far so good... The only problem is that I use numerous applications that need to access the web and it's a very tedious work to keep enabling and disabling the proxy server on all these applications.

Is there any application that allows me to configure the proxy server I use and then listen for any connection through any application and the tunnel that connection through the proxy server? Or maybe something different?

I'm just looking for a simpler way to turn the proxy on for all the applications I use instead of doing it manually for each application...

[ProclaimDragon]

Not possible? :(

[+BudMan MVC]

even if you set a machine proxy setting -- that does not always mean that all your apps will use it??

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserve...3.mspx?mfr=true

the command you would be interested in in set proxy

netsh winhttp

set proxy

Configures the WinHTTP proxy setting.

Syntax

set proxy [proxy-server=] ProxyServerName [bypass-list=] <HostsList>

Parameters

Proxy-Server

Required. Specifies the proxy server to use for http, secure http (https), or both http and https protocols.

Bypass-list

Optional. Specifies a list of Web sites that should be visited without utilizing the proxy server. Use "<local>" to bypass all short name hosts.

Examples

Following are three examples of how to use the set proxy command.

set proxy myproxy

set proxy myproxy:80 "<local>bar"

set proxy proxy-server="http=myproxy;https=sproxy:88" bypass-list="*.contoso.com"

[ProclaimDragon]

even if you set a machine proxy setting -- that does not always mean that all your apps will use it??

Is that really a question? If it is, I don't understand what are you asking...

Anyway, I tried the following:

Then opened Internet Explorer 7, cleared the proxy in the settings, restarted IE7, tried to open Google. Didn't work...

Am I doing something wrong?

[+BudMan MVC]

My bad :blush: I really don't know what I was thinking this morning -- I really bad misread your post.

This sets the winhttp proxy - so any application/service on the machine that uses that will use this proxy. IE still uses the older wininet though - sorry!

I do not know of anyway for applications that use wininet to use a common proxy setting. Most applications allow for auto discovery, ie WPAD. Does your school network have this setup.. You would think any site using proxy would setup so clients could auto discover the proxy if it was not transparent.

You could look to see if your application(s) can use the IE settings -- many of them that support proxies have this option.

Off the top -- I guess you could run a local proxy on your machine.. Point all your applications to that proxy, then when are on a network that requires a proxy setting, you would just need to change your local proxy software to point to the upstream one your using.

[ProclaimDragon]

I do not know of anyway for applications that use wininet to use a common proxy setting. Most applications allow for auto discovery, ie WPAD. Does your school network have this setup.. You would think any site using proxy would setup so clients could auto discover the proxy if it was not transparent.

Well, I have no idea, cause I didn't understand much of what you just said lol... You could try and get in touch with the wifi techinal support of the university but I would need to know what I'm talking about so I could explain it to them...

You could look to see if your application(s) can use the IE settings -- many of them that support proxies have this option.

Yeah, that would be perfect but not all applications implement that and most of the applications I use don't... That sucks, but I can't for any developer to implement that feature, although I've requested it a few times but most of the time they just ignore me because it's not a "must have" for most people...

Off the top -- I guess you could run a local proxy on your machine.. Point all your applications to that proxy, then when are on a network that requires a proxy setting, you would just need to change your local proxy software to point to the upstream one your using.

This seems like a solution I could live with... Would you mind help me do that? What software would you recommend for that and how to configure it... Or if you can point me in the right direction, it would be nice...

Thanks for all the help, you've been my savior in my latest topics ;)

[+BudMan MVC]

There are quite a few different ways you could set it up.. Off the top one that might be easy to setup would be cproxy

http://www.youngzsoft.net/ccproxy/index.html

I'm pretty sure it will run in a demo mode that allows a couple of users with no time limit. And it does support cascading proxies from what I recall.

Squid would be another option.. But might be a bit overkill, and might be a bit of a setup for you? Another option off the top of my head would be 3proxy -- I know for a fact it supports proxy chains.. And could be used as well. Nice thing about it is its FREEWARE!

http://3proxy.ru/

There are plenty of other's out that could be used, but to be honest for someone that does not understand networking/proxies, etc.. it might be a bit much.. And depending on what your doing exactly, your getting into the area of things that could be used for circumvention of a schools policies, etc.

What I would really suggest is you get with your schools IT.. I can not believe they would not have their proxy setup as a transparent or with atleast WPAD support, etc.

Ie if they allow the applications to proxy thru in the first place -- why would they not make it easy for their users to use?

[ProclaimDragon]

Because they are stupid lol... :p I have no clue but that's how it works...

Anyway, is not that I don't understand networking/proxies, I do, not that much, but I do a bit. I just have no clue which type of software would I need to make what you said work. I mean, if I decided to go look for software to do what you said I wouldn't even know where to start searching... What feature am I looking for here? Proxy chains?

The biggest problem in talking about this with you here is that English is not my main language and when the conversation gets too technical, it gets harder for me to talk about it, understand everything and express myself...

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah language can be a barrier quite often -- I have to work with German, French and Korean and now Chinese IT quite a bit at work. The French and German are not too bad - they are pretty much fluent in english. The Korean is the worse -- the one IT manager always says OK when you ask him if he understands -- have come to learn that really means he has no freaking idea WTF your talking about ;) heheheh So yeah I know how the language barrier can be some times.

But your english is very good!! I have always been very impressed with people that speak and for that matter write more that 1 language. I know enough to order a beer, and ask where the bathroom in a few different one's -- but thats about the extent ;)

Check out ccproxy and or 3proxy -- those 2 should get you started. And will do what your wanting to do.. If you were going to look for other software -- it needs to support parent parent proxies, could also be called cascading or yes chains.

It needs the ability to forward the all its traffic to another proxy, and if need be auth to it? Do you have to auth to your proxy?

I will PM you another option, but since it would really be circumventing your schools proxy I do not want to post it.

[Raa]

So you're looking for a proxy switcher of sorts?

I'm after one myself - if you can let me know if such an app exists, that'd be great! :)

[ProclaimDragon]

Well, I just tried CCProxy and it worked a bit, let me explain...

I tried it with Firefox and mIRC so I could test both HTTP and SOCKS proxy and they both worked. However, I tried to configure Thunderbird the same way I did for Firefox/mIRC because when I use the proxy from the university, the settings are all the same, the hostname/port only changes for SOCKS proxy but since I used SOCKS with mIRC and it worked... Anyway, I couldn't make Thunderbird to connect to all the mail servers I have.

The other problem (for me) with CCProxy is that it doesn't allow me a quick turn on/off feature of the proxy chaining and it gets worst because the way their options dialog is built. If I only had to open the options dialog, turn on/off the proxy chaining feature, I would be ok with that but I have to select WWW -> turn off, SOCKS -> turn off, POP3 -> turn off and that sucks, but yes, it's less pain that to turn on/off proxy in all the programs I use. It should have a global turn on/off function and even better, a shortcut on the system tray.

Not exactly a proxy switcher, because, how could a proxy switcher switch the proxy in all the programs I use? Most of them don't import settings from IE, if all of them did, that would be easy... I think my best solution is what BudMan suggested: proxy server where I set all my apps to that proxy and then forward the requests to a different proxy server.

[ProclaimDragon]

Nobody has any idea of other software applications I could use for this?

[+BudMan MVC]

did you try 3proxy?

[ProclaimDragon]

3proxy is a command line application and I'm looking for a graphical application. Currently, I don't have much time to be digging documentation to see how could I configure it the way I want...

I tried to search but couldn't find any other proxy server... Don't you have any other recommendations?

[+BudMan MVC]

And why do you need a gui??? Create a batch file with the command(s) needed to turn it on, create another that turns it off, etc.. This seems alot easy to switch between than some gui you have to click thru menus and buttons -- which you were complaining about ;)

Click On, Click Off -- what could be easier???

[ProclaimDragon]

I need/want a GUI because it would be easier to configure and like I said I don't have time to dig into the documentation to get it working. Not right now with all my university exams and projects.

I'm complaining about having to go through menus and buttons to enable/disable proxy chaining, but that's it. Not complaining about the GUI itself... Most of these applications (I tried ezProxy) work as I want, the only problem is that they don't have any option to turn off/on all of the chaining proxies, that's the only problem.

And besides, I don't want to manually execute a batch file every time I start Windows. I want it to autostart manually and be able to simply, click somewhere (tray icon would be perfect) to turn it off or on. But maybe I'm asking for very specific things.

Well, I found this C# lib to create a proxy server, maybe in the future, when I have free time, I'll code my own application to fit my needs, or maybe not...

Thanks for all your help, I'll keep searching for different proxy server applications though :)

[ProclaimDragon]

I decided to give 3proxy a go (I found a bit of spare time laying on the ground :p) and after reading the howto, I came up with the following configuration file:

auth none

internal 127.0.0.1

allow *

parent 1000 http proxy.uminho.pt 3128

proxy

But it's not working... I changed the Firefox proxy settings to 127.0.0.1:3128 but it doesn't work. If I remove the "allow" and "parent" lines, I noticed that the proxy is working. The problem is in the chaining, the documentation is not very clear...

Does anyone have any idea where the problem might be?

[+BudMan MVC]

Does it state it can use fqdn vs IP? All of the examples give IP.

[ProclaimDragon]

Not sure if that's the problem... I just pinged proxy.uminho.pt to see the IP and replaced the hostname with the IP and it didn't work either :/

EDIT:

I just managed to make it work by changing "auth none" to "auth iponly" :)

Edited April 17, 2008 by Nazgulled

[+BudMan MVC]

If I get a chance tonight I will try and duplicate what your doing at home.

[ProclaimDragon]

I just edited my post saying I made it work, didn't you read?

But now I'm having problems with doing the same for SOCKS...

Maybe it's related to the way I'm testing this. Let me explain... I have setup an SSH server at my home and I'm connecting to that SSH server using the university SOCKS proxy and it works. Now I'm trying to the same thing as I did for HTTP proxy with 3proxy but for SOCKS. The thing is, the problem might be on my side (my home SSH server) so, is there a better way I can test the SOCKS proxy?

I mean, do you know of any simple application I could try and use the university SOCKS proxy so I could test 3proxy instead of trying to connect to my SSH server cause there might be some misconfiguration on that end...

[+BudMan MVC]

No I missed your edit.. kewl so you got it working ;)

As to a socks application -- what just an application that can use a socks proxy? IE and or Firefox can use a socks proxy, I use putty as simple socks proxy quite often when I need to tunnel something -- and then tunnel firefox thru it.

There is a opensource application that will allow you to

Socksifies (that is adds ability to use SOCKS or another type of proxy) to proxy-unaware Windows applications.

http://www.freecap.ru/eng/

But I thought you could chain up with 3proxy to socks proxy, but have it run in http mode, etc.

[ProclaimDragon]

I think I've managed to work, here's my current configuration file:

internal 127.0.0.1

auth iponly

allow * * * 22
parent 1000 socks5 socks.uminho.pt 1080

allow * * * 21
parent 1000 socks5 127.0.0.2 1080

allow *
parent 1000 http proxy.uminho.pt 3128

proxy
socks

Is there anything wrong with using 127.0.0.2? I'm using it because I use Tunnelier (something like PuTTY) to connect to my home SSH server and then create a SOCKS proxy forwarding so I can connect to FTP sites through the university because they block port 21...

Just making sure that what I'm doing makes sense...

[+BudMan MVC]

If your tunnelier listens on that then it should be fine.. Does it work? If so -- your good.

[ProclaimDragon]

Yes, it works. But I was just wondering, you have far more understanding than me on this subject...