A proxy server works as a connector or a middlemen

1. Anonymous browsing One of the great benefits of using a proxy server is to hide internal clients from external network. It makes your network id anonymous as the proxy servers will be the forefront protector hiding your network IP and sharing out theirs. Since that you are hidden behind the scene, technically speaking, you are safe from attacks, as well as unscrupulous hackers, scammers and spammer as the proxy server has prevented and protected you from directly access by external users or systems. 2. GeoLocation Testing Nowadays, many web sites have implemented geolocation technology to tailor the content and redirect their visitors to an appropriate page, by detecting the location of where the visitors are from. Recent trend shows that localized content has started gaining popularity among the web communities. Technically, it wasn't that difficult to implement such technology, as various of free and paid APIs, services, are available for your choices, i.e, IPInfoDB, IP2Location, ... However, when it comes to testing, it should be properly planned and done before you can commercialize and deploy the solution. The challenging part was you need to test your solution from various locations to confirm the succeed implementation. This might not be an easy task, unless you have lot of friends around the globe and willing to offer you a hand. If not, Proxy Servers should come into picture. With proxy servers located in various locations around the world, they become a handy tool assisting you in your geolocation testing. Where should I get the proxy then? Of course, there a lot of open proxies offering you free proxing service, but you must be extremely careful in selecting the right and honest service providers. Most of the time, you wouldn't know until you are suck into problem. My honest advice was always looking for a paid and reliable service, such as, LocaProxy, and so on. After all, you may not want to risk your business solution, right!? 3. Access sites filtered by ISP or institution Occasionally, only a portion of Internet content will be displayed in schools or institution. When sites and contents are filtered by the ISP, you can bypass an ISP proxy by setting your browser to use 'another proxy server'. 4. Performance Proxy servers may also cache Web pages and provide more efficient web content delivery. It can speed up the access to documents and site contents as it will always look in its local cache of previously downloaded results of all requests like pictures, and other static graphical content. Since the proxy server is often on the same network as the user, the next request for that same page can be obtained much faster as it will not forward the request to the external site each time. This dramatically improves the performance for end users. If there are hundreds or thousands of users using the same network, it is significantly reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and costs as the proxy servers can optimize and compress the content as well. 5. Filter Requests Proxy servers can also be used to filter data or requests from external site. For example, it is widely implemented by organizations or institutions to ensure that Internet usage conforms to the local usage policy. Authentication can be enabled in helping administrator to effectively control the content delivered while distributing the internet access. It is important to only allow certain hosts to bypass the proxy in order to prevent malicious content and block websites that display distracting material. In addition, it can also prevent employees from visiting inappropriate web sites during their working hours. 6. Load Balancing Proxy servers can also be used as load-balancer in a reverse direction for the workload among several content HTTP servers, each of them servings its own application area.