General

When information is retrieved from the Internet, the IP address of the computer from which the information is retrieved can be recorded on these Internet resources (e.g. a web server) (and used for statistical evaluations, for example). However, when the web proxy service is used, such information is retrieved from the Internet via an interposed KIT server (the “web proxy”). It addresses the following scenarios:

• It is possible to have a certain anonymity when accessing the internet
  • To the outside, only the IP address of the web proxy is visible; the one of your own computer is hidden
  • Other options like fingerprinting or java script, which also allows conclusions about your own computer, remain in place and should not be forgotten
• Possibility to have access to internet resources, for example website, from the computers that (should) have no direct Internet access due to specific restrictions.
• Inquiries are cached to a certain extent so that frequently requested resources only have to be obtained once from outside, which can mean a time advantage
• Computers that are logically/organizationally assigned to KIT, but are outside of the network (e.g. Campus Alpin), can connect via it and thus use resources thar are only assigned to direct KIT addresses.

Technical information

Configuration instruction (especially also for the common browsers) can be found here.