Quick Reference Search Tool Webopedia Jobs Link to Us Advertising Tech Support Submit a URL Request a Term Report an Error Internet News Internet Investing Internet Technology Windows Internet Tech. Buy BSD Products Free Bus. A server that sits between a client application , such as a Web browser , and a real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server.
Proxy servers can dramatically improve performance for groups of users.
This is because it saves the results of all requests for a certain amount of time. Consider the case where both user X and user Y access the World Wide Web through a proxy server. First user X requests a certain Web page , which we'll call Page 1. Sometime later, user Y requests the same page. Since the proxy server is often on the same network as the user, this is a much faster operation.