29.18. Configuring Apache as a Proxy Server
An HTTP proxy is a server that accepts requests for web pages from browsers, retrieves the requested pages from their servers, and returns them to the browser. They are often used on networks on which clients are not allowed to connect to web servers directly so that restrictions on who can access the web and what sites they can view can be enforced. A proxy can also cache commonly accessed pages, so if many clients visit the same site its pages only have to be downloaded once. This speeds up web access and reduces bandwidth utilization.
Apache is not the best proxy server available for UNIX systems—Squid (covered in Chapter 44) takes that honor. Squid has many more configurable options, is more efficient, ...
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