configuring network connection via proxy

[RW]

On Fri, 18 May 2007 01:04:04 +0200
martinko <gamato at users.sf.net> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I need to plug my company laptop in to different networks many of
> which make use of some sort of proxy for accessing the internet.  And
> every time I face this challenge of changing connection settings of
> different applications in many places.  This is of course very
> inconvenient.
> 
> What I would like to be able to do is to change the connection
> settings regarding a proxy in one place and have it affect all my
> applications. 

The traditional way is through environmental variables, but lot of GUI
applications wont respect them, and it wouldn't work smoothly
without a reboot anyway. 

I would suggest you use some kind of local proxy, either a full
caching http level proxy like squid, or a simple TCP redirection. You
can then point your apps at a localhost port, and just reconfigure the
proxy. Take a look at the www and net ports for proxies.

A lot of applications support automatic proxy discovery, which might be
an alternative.