miércoles, mayo 30, 2007

Differences between an HTTP/FTP/SSL proxy and a SOCKS proxy

Squid is a HTTP proxy. All communication to Squid is HTTP. But HTTP proxies can resolve a number of different URL-schemes for their HTTP clients.

The difference between an HTTP proxy and SOCKS is that the HTTP proxy is
fully aware of the protocol being proxied, and as result have well defined behavior. The main difference is the ability to cache results.

SOCKS on the other hand is protocol neutral and SHOULD NOT perform caching or other heavily protocol dependent actions.

With a web browser you can support both kind of proxys in order to surf the web.