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  Setting Up a Proxy Connection in Mozilla Firefox

Note: These instructions are for setting up a proxy connection in Mozilla Firefox. For instructions on setting up a proxy connection in Internet Explorer, click here.

Setting up a proxy connection in Mozilla Firefox 2

  1. Start Mozilla Firefox.
  2. From the main menu click on: Tools >> Options.
  3. Click on the "Advanced" icon.
  4. Click on the "Network" tab.
  5. In the "Connection" frame, click on the "Settings" button.
  6. In the "Connection Settings" dialog box that appears, click on the "Manual proxy configuration" radio button.
  7. In the "HTTP Proxy" textbox, enter the IP address of the proxy server (see below).
  8. In the "Port" textbox, enter the port on which the proxy service is running (see below).
  9. Click "OK" to close the "Connection Settings" dialog box.
  10. Click "OK" to close the "Options" dialog box.
  11. Proxy server configuration is complete.

Free proxy server IP addresses

IP addresses for free proxy servers can be found in many places on the Internet, but because these lists change every day, you'll need to perform a web search for an updated list.

Proxy server port

If your organization has a comparatively strict firewall policy in place, You may want to try only those proxy servers whose free proxy service is running on port 80. Port 80 is the network port on which the world wide web runs, so if you can access web pages in your web browser, port 80 should be open.

Miscellaneous considerations

  1. Free proxy servers are quite popular because they allow you to surf the web anonymously and bypass corporate firewall restrictions. For this reason, surfing through a proxy server is usually slower than normal web surfing. There are, of course, paid proxy services that are much faster.
  2. Geography is important: if you live in the USA, for example, free proxy servers in Europe or Asia are farther away, and as such often yield a slower connection. These servers are occasionally faster, however, because of time differences (e.g., at noon in the USA everyone in Japan is asleep, so there will be less demand on the free proxy server).
  3. If you try a specific proxy server connection and it doesn’t work, the proxy server is either offline or full -- just try another one on the list.
  4. To switch back to your normal direct Internet connection, just uncheck the "Use a proxy server for your LAN" checkbox mentioned above. Internet Explorer will remember your most recent proxy settings so you don’t have to type them in again next time.
  5. You can verify the success of your proxy connection by comparing your system’s IP address before and after connecting to the proxy server. Before you connect, point your web browser to:

    Find Your IP Address

    After you connect to the proxy server, hit reload on your web browser. If the proxy connection was successful, the numbers listed under "Your IP address is" will change (note that you can also use this approach to gauge the speed of the proxy server that you are connected to).
  6. Enjoy!
 
 
 
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