Proxy Servers
Other Internet gateways direct traffic between your network and the Internet by mediating communications among servers on the Internet and client applications on your local networked computers. These gateways have a proxy server, which acts as a go-between for your network and for the servers on the Internet.
Instead of requesting Web pages, email service, and other Internet services directly, all your networked computers request the services from the gateway's proxy server. The proxy sever then forwards the requests to the actual Internet servers on behalf of your networked computers. The Internet servers send the Web page requests, email, and so forth to the proxy server, and it forwards the materials to the appropriate computers on your network.
Setting up for the proxy server
You may need to set up each machine's Web browser, email software, and other Internet applications so that they look to the proxy server for Internet services. In Web browsers, this setting is in the preferences or options dialogs.
Email: For email software, you must set up the proxy server itself with the name of your ISP's SMTP server for outgoing mail (for example, mail.domainname.com) and the name of your ISP's POP3 server for incoming mail (for example, pop.domain.com). If your ISP provides an IMAP 4 server for improved handling of incoming mail, you should specify it as well (for example, imap4.domainname.com). In addition, you need to set up your email programs, such as Microsoft Outlook or Qualcomm Eudora, to use the proxy server instead of the ISP's SMTP, POP3, and IMAP 4 servers.
Other Internet applications: You may discover that a particular Internet application can't be set to use a proxy server. You won't be able to use this application with a shared Internet connection; instead, you'd use the application only on a computer with its own Internet connection. Conversely, you may discover that a particular proxy server doesn't support an Internet service that one of applications use (such as a game software). You can either try a different proxy server, or run this application on a computer with its own Internet connection.