Sygate Personal Firewall Sygate for Proxy Services Kevin Reichard
Sygate for Proxy Services
There are many ways that Sygate differs from a true proxy server, however. Users must decide whether the benefits of Sygate outweigh any related problems. The server is based on Network Address Translation (NAT) technology, which is typically used in routers. Basically, the applications on a networked PC do not need to be configured to go through the proxy server; under NAT, the networked PC assumes it is a unique entity on the Internet and does not funnel everything through the proxy server.
As a result, applications that do not support proxies, such as Microsoft's version of telnet under Windows, can use Sygate to connect to the Internet. At the same time, Internet applications that do support proxy servers, such as Netscape Communicator, must be hand-configured to work with a proxy server.
In other ways, however, traditional proxy-server technology may better fit an organization's needs. Enabling a proxy server is a good way to ensure access control of high-bandwidth protocols like streaming media; if an organization has not configured the proxy server to support a streaming-media protocol, users cannot use it on their own.
However, Sygate enables its use to be similar to that of a proxy server (in essence, being a proxy of a proxy), providing selective access for applications to run server-based applications or Internet games. Using Sygate's AppRule feature, organizations can configure it to pass certain port traffic to specific PCs on the network. This could be Internet applications (e.g., telnet servers, pcAnywhere hosts, and instant-messaging programs) or Internet-based games.
