A proxy server acts as an intermediary between your computer (a client) and website (a remote server). When a client makes a request for some resource, the request is sent to the proxy server first. The proxy server then forwards the request to the target server, receives the response, and sends the response back to the client. Proxy servers can be used for various purposes, including improving performance, enhancing security, but mainly for hiding the client’s real IP address.
There are two main types of proxy servers available today – HTTP and SOCKS. The HTTP proxy servers are specifically designed to handle HTTP traffic. It operates at the application layer and is often used for web browsing. HTTP proxies can modify requests and responses, cache web pages, and apply filtering rules.
The SOCKS proxy servers can handle any type of traffic (TCP or UDP). They can be used for various applications, including web browsing, email, file transfers, and more. Both HTTP and SOCKS do not provide encryption for the connection.
If you have a list containing proxy servers, then you can test them using a free tool called Vovsoft Proxy Checker. It is available as a portable program. It supports validating of the proxy servers of both the HTTP and the SOCKS type.
Proxy server lists available on the Internet are available in many formats such as TXT, CSV, JSON etc. Proxy Checker supports only the TXT format of the lists. Even in the TXT format, the proxy server list should contain protocol with ://, then the IP address, then a colon and finally the port number. Each line should have only one proxy server.
After launching Proxy Checker, we have to load the proxy server list by clicking on the “Load” button. You can also manually add a proxy server by clicking on the “Add” button. After loading the proxy server list, we can click on the “Start” button to check and validating each of the proxy servers. The results and errors are displayed in the list itself.
In the settings of the tool, you can change various parameters used for testing the proxies. These settings include the connect timeout, read timeout, user agent for browser, test URL, default protocol, and multi-threading. Multi-threading is useful for testing huge proxy lists.
If you have one or more proxy server lists containing a large number of entries, then you will probably find Vovsoft Proxy Checker for PC very useful. It can validate all your proxy servers in a matter of seconds.
You can download Vovsoft Proxy Checker for PC from https://vovsoft.com/software/proxy-checker/.