Product Description

A proxy is a specialized Web server which operates on or behind a firewall, which makes more efficient use of network bandwidth and offers improved network security. This is the first book on proxy server technology (from setup to tuning tricks) written by one of the developers of the technology.

From the Inside Flap

Preface

Thanks, Ari. You're a fountain of information as usual.

Gregg Ulrich

During the four years that I have worked on the fast-evolving World Wide Web technology—specifically proxy servers—I have felt uneasy about the fact that no one has really had time to produce good documentation that would provide true insight and understanding of this great technology. We engineers who understand how things work are often just too busy to explain them to others. After all, an Internet year is just 52 days long, and the average release cycle tends to be less than nine (Earth) months. So many new features, so little time.

I've always taken great pride in promptly answering all the E-mail that I get. But there have been times when I have been completely overwhelmed by the number of messages and the span of questions that I have received. And I've realized that I have explained the same things over and over again in E-mail. If only there were a book that covered all these issues, people could just read it and receive the same answer I would give them anyway—and maybe learn a bit more and gain depth in their understanding about how things work, and why they work like that.

So one day I got an E-mail from Mary Franz at Prentice Hall asking if I'd be interesting in writing a book on Web proxy servers. Well, not being able to say "no" to more work, I said yes, sure, might as well. I have always found working on the Web to be rewarding. It's great to receive messages from the Internet, thanking and praising my efforts.