For companies that do business on the Internet or the web, a proxy server can act as a transparent intermediary between individual clients and the servers that contain the information the clients want. This important feature makes Netscape Proxy Server valuable even for companies that have full web access. Netscape Proxy Server is the first commercial proxy server to provide caching. Netscape Proxy Server enhances network security and reliability and provides advanced server management features that let you create intelligent proxy networks that are totally transparent to users. If a document is requested more than once, subsequent requests are faster because the proxy doesn't have to contact the remote server repeatedly.
Replication can dramatically reduce network traffic and associated costs.
Netscape Proxy Server also provides distributed caching so that multiple proxy servers can operate as a single logical cache for load-balancing and failover, and dynamic proxy routing so that the proxy server can query other caches to determine if a document is available. If used as a reverse proxy , it can help your host machine handle a high volume of requests while reducing their effect on the host machine's performance. A reverse proxy lets the content server reside safely inside the firewall while the reverse proxy acts as a server outside the firewall. The Unix proxy server can also be used as a secure reverse proxy so that all information is securely transferred between clients, proxy, and content server. It provides flexible logging of client transactions, including client host names or IP addresses, access dates and times, accessed URLs, byte counts of all transferred data, routing information, and the success of transactions.