How to configure Gateway as Proxy Server

Question

In my office environment, my machine is configured with an IP address, Subnet Mask and a Default Gateway. The Default Gateway does not allow internet connectivity but is configured to provide us with connectivity to some server based tool.

Now in order to provide us with the internet access, a proxy server is configured via the LAN settings in the IE. The problem here is the Proxy is restricted for some sites that I need like certain technical blogs and all, which it filters out in the blogs category and does not load.

I do have another Gateway server address that I can use in Local Area Connection IPv4 Properties as Default Gateway address which removes this restriction. I thought that this should be configurable to the LAN Settings as a proxy as well. But when I do so, I lose the connection to the internet.

I am not sure if all Gateways can act as proxy servers. Or is there anything that I am doing wrong. I am using the default port 8080 in LAN Settings.

I can ask this from the technician but I am not sure if he would be able to answer that as he is just a first level guy. I thought of figuring it out myself.

It might be a stupid question, but I am really not a network guy. Please pardon my lack of knowledge.

Answer 1

First, let me answer your question directly:

"gateway", in the sense you use here, means router. And a router handles (rougly) the layer 3 of the OSI model. What you're asking for is an HTTP proxy which actually operates on layer 4.

In layman's therm: unless your gateway device is more capable than it typically would, you can't use it as a proxy server.

Now, please allow me to give you a less technical, more formal and (hopefully) better answer:

Someone (typically, your network administrator) took time to set things up this way. They worked with the blessing of your management and you really shouldn't try to work around that for many reasons (you don't understand the full consequences of working around the limitation being the most trivial one, you're probably not allowed to do so by your corporate rules being the most obvious one).

So, instead of trying to work around them, document your problem, what are the consequences of the limitation for your work, send that to your manager and ask him/her to have the situation looked at by your IT dep. If your demands are reasonable, it's the job of IT to provide a solution for you.