Reducing reliance on proxy servers
ResNet Newsletter 8 (previous) :: Interruption to service in Clifton residences 12th April (next)
Up until last wednesday ResNet relied on a collection of proxy servers to provide access to websites on the internet. But applications like itunes and msn messenger didn't work very well with proxy servers. So we have decided to unblock port 80 on the University firewall and allow ResNet users direct access to websites.
This should mean that your software will now work more reliably, and there is no longer any need to configure proxy server settings in your web browser. But it is possible that there may be performance issues, caused by the lack of proxy servers.
We are going to be keeping a very close eye on the situation, and are prepared to roll back to using the proxy servers if there does seem to be a substantial increase in latency or packet loss.