It is designed for replicating and filtering access to web-based content. At the same time, for network administrators this growth has raised new issues about network congestion and security, about how to ensure fast and reliable service for mission-critical applications, and about how to control access to restricted network resources. 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 iPlanet Web Proxy Server valuable even for companies that have full web access. 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. 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. It enables you to set up content filtering by URL, and it provides access control by user, IP address, host name or domain, and web content.