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Web Proxy Servers

Published Dec 30, 1997 by Pearson. Part of the Internet Infrastructure Series series.

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Copyright 1998
Edition: 1st

Book
ISBN-10: 0-13-680612-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-680612-7

68061-1

Make the most of your proxy servers!

Proxy servers are critical to the success of virtually every large Web and intranet site. But managing and optimizing them has always been a black art—until now. In Web Proxy Servers, the co-developer of the first proxy server, the CERN Proxy, explains the technology in depth—and shows how to optimize any proxy server in any environment.

Understand the basic architecture of proxy servers, and compare firewall proxy servers, departmental, personal and specialized proxies. Discover how proxy servers handle every major Internet protocol, including HTTP, FTP, Gopher, News, SSL, WAIS, Telnet and LDAP. Learn how to implement filtering by URLs or PICS content ratings. Review proxy server caching in unprecedented depth, including:

Guaranteeing the freshness of cached documents
Measuring and optimizing cache “hit ratios”
On-demand and on-command caching
Web-based advertising

Discover the best proxy security solutions, including encryption and authentication. Compare proxy server configuration for Web sites, intranets, extranets, and “DNS-deprived” environments. Get troubleshooting tips and sample auto-configuration scripts. Learn all you need to know to maximize performance, including:

Estimating loads, establishing proxy hierarchies, choosing hardware and software
Balancing loads with Round-Robin DNS, hash-function based proxy selection, CARP, ICP, and other methods
Using reverse proxying effectively

Web Proxy Servers is a must-have resource for all Web and intranet administrators who care about performance and security.

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Sample Content

Downloadable Sample Chapter

Click here for a sample chapter for this book: 0136806120.pdf

I. OVERVIEW OF FIREWALLS AND PROXY SERVERS.

1. Firewall Overview.

Terminology. Firewalls. Summary.

2. Overview of Proxy Servers.

History of Web Proxy Servers. General Properties of Proxy Servers. Different Types of Proxy Servers. Generic Firewall Proxy Servers. Proxy Chaining. Departmental Proxy Servers. Personal Proxy Servers. Specialized Proxy Servers. Why Proxy Servers are Not Part of Web Servers? Dynamic Content. Summary.

3. Internal Server Architectures.

Single-Process Serialized Server Architecture. Forking. Process Mob Architecture. Multithreaded, Single-Process Architecture. Multithreaded, Multiprocess Architecture. Single-Process, Asynchronous I/O Architecture. Mixed Asynchronous I/O with Threads Architecture. Summary.

II. PROTOCOLS.

4. The HTTP Protocol.

Overall Operation of HTTP. Design Goals of HTTP. HTTP/0.9. HTTP/1.0. The HTTP/1.1 Protocol. HTTP Persistent Connections (Keep-Alive). HTTP Authentication. Virtual Servers. META HTTP-EQUIV. Mime Media Types. HTTP Request Methods. HTTP Headers. HTTP Response Status Codes. Summary.

5. Cookies—The HTTP State Management Protocol.

Overall Operation of Cookies. Common Uses of Cookies. Cookies vs. Proxy Cookies. Non-Static Route and Cookies with Encoded IP Address. Summary.

6. ICP—The Internet Cache Protocol.

ICP Message Format. ICP Op Codes. ICP Option Flags. Multicast with ICP. Security Considerations. Summary.

7. Handling of Different Protocols by Proxies.

Standard Port Numbers. HTTP. FTP. Gopher. News. SSL, HTTPS, and SNEWS. (SSL) Tunneling Protocol. WAIS. LDAP. IIOP. Telnet. Streaming Protocols Based on UDP. Summary.

III. CACHING.

8. Caching.

Advantages of Caching. Disadvantages of Caching. Conditional Requests. Guaranteeing Freshness of Cached Documents. Cache Hit Ratio. On-Demand Caching. On-Command Caching. Caching of Data Requiring Authentication. Caching Data from Local Hosts. Caching and SSL. Caching Queries. HTTP/1.1 Cache Control Terminology. HTTP/1.1 Cache Control. Summary.

9. Caching and Online Advertising.

"Cache Busting". Alternatives for "Cache Busting". Copyright Violation by Cache. Summary.

10. Cache Architectures.

Components of a Cache Architecture. Existing Cache Architectures. Summary.

11. Garbage Collection.

The Idea of Garbage Collection. Cache Garbage Collection. Run-Time Cache Management. Summary.

IV. FILTERING, MONITORING, AND ACCESS CONTROL.

12. Filtering.

URL Filtering. Content Rating. Censorship on the Internet. Request Header Filtering. Request Content Filtering. Response Header Filtering. Response Content Filtering. Summary.

13. Access Control.

Access Control By User Authentication. Access Control By Client Host Address. Summary.

14. Logging and Monitoring.

Format of Access Log Files. Log Analyzers. Analyzing Proxy Logs. Determining the Peak Load. Monitoring. Summary.

V. SECURITY.

15. Encryption and Authentication Security.

Single Key Cryptography. Public Key Cryptography. Authentication with Public Key Cryptography. Message Digest (Hash) Algorithms. The MD5 Algorithm. Certificates. Summary.

16. Setup Security.

Server User ID. File Ownerships and Permissions (UNIX). Common Security Holes in Server Software Itself. Access Control Based on Incoming IP Address. Reverse Proxy Security. Firewall Router Configuration. Information Revealed in HTTP Headers. Protocol Verification. Capturing Authentication Credentials. Securing the Logs. Passwords in FTP URLS. Java, JavaScript, and ActiveX Security. File Upload Security. Summary.

VI. PERFORMANCE.

17. Performance.

DNS Lookups. Protocol Performance. Cache Performance. Filtering. Summary.

18. Capacity Planning.

Purposes Of The Proxy Server. Estimated Load. Average Transaction Time. Choosing the Proxy Hierarchy. Choosing the Hardware and Software. Disk Space. Cache Configuration. Summary.

19. Load Balancing.

DNS Round-Robin-Based Load Balancing. Hash-Function-Based Proxy Selection. CARP—Cache Array Routing Protocol. ICP-Based Proxy Selection. Client Proxy Auto-Configuration in Load Balancing. Other Load Balancing Solutions. Summary.

20. Reverse Proxying.

Uses of Reverse Proxy Servers. Components of a Reverse Proxy Setup. Secure Reverse Proxying. Dynamic Content and Reverse Proxying. Alternatives to Reverse Proxying. Summary.

VII. DEPLOYMENT SCENARIOS.

21. Case Studies.

Case Study 1: A Small Internet Software Company. Case Study 2: A Small Accounting Firm. Case Study 3: A Medium-sized Company. Case Study 4: A Large Corporation. Summary.

22. Trouble-Shooting.

Debugging with Telnet. Packet Sniffing. Tracing System Calls. Tracing the Network Route. HTTP Tracing. Trouble-Shooting the Cache. Summary.

VIII. APPENDICES.

Appendix A.

Proxy Auto-Configuration Support in Clients. Auto-Configuration File Mime Type. Setting Up an Auto-Configuration File. Predefined JavaScript Utility Functions for Proxy Auto-Configuration File. Example Proxy Auto-Configuration Scripts. Generating Proxy Auto-Configuration File from CGI. CARP In Proxy Auto-configuration. Summary.

Appendix B.

Wildcard Expressions. Regular Expression Syntax. Using Regular Expressions for URLS. Shell Expression Syntax. Summary.

Appendix C.
Terminology.
References.
Index.

Preface

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.

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