How to use a proxy server to replace a Broadband Router

At present, proxy servers are widely used as broadband routers, which is also helpful for the development of the wireless routing industry. When enterprise network users use broadband to access the Internet, there are two popular methods, one is to use the ADSL big cat open routing mode to share the Internet, the other is to use a PC or server as a proxy server for broadband access.

The first method is discussed by the author in the article "ADSL modem routing, a popular misunderstanding. The more popular proxy server method has become a popular defect in the process of enterprise network modernization. This article aims to make a rough analysis and propose effective solutions. Using proxy servers to access the Internet seems to be a low-cost and easy-to-use method. However, in actual use, there are many huge defects. In a word, the efficiency is low, high maintenance costs, poor stability, and high costs seriously affect enterprises' information development.

In a specific application, the configuration of the proxy server is generally to take out a PC or server and install a dual Nic on it. One Nic connects to the broadband device and the other Nic connects to the switch, install the corresponding proxy or routing software, such as WinRouter. Using this method to share the Internet, you can find the following difficult problems in practical applications:

(1) difficult to configure and maintain. Setting up a Broadband Router proxy software on the server requires professional operations. The software and system configuration are very troublesome and time-consuming.

(2) cannot be online for a long time. Because the server is a soft route, it is prone to crashes when the server is online for a long time. Therefore, the user is forced to restart the server once a day, and the entire software system needs to be redone once a week, in order to ensure that there are few dead ends. Although such operations can be tolerated for the time being, it is unacceptable for enterprises to develop modern information applications in the future.

(3) occupying a large amount of server resources. After the proxy server undertakes the access function, it occupies server resources. When the server runs some large management software, resources are shared, which may easily reduce the running efficiency and cause compatibility problems, this causes system instability.

(4) high costs. The price of genuine routing software is very high, or even exceeds the cost of all hardware. If you use a non-genuine software, regardless of the moral pressure and risk, the single-V version of the software itself is not reliable. In practice, it is found that there are many fatal functional barriers in the popular D-version routing software, which is significantly different from the genuine version.

(5) greatly affected by faults. Long recovery time, software and hardware faults, too long to solve. Especially after the crash, hard start may cause catastrophic damage to the management software and important data running on the same server.

(6) Some special access functions cannot be completed. To allow Internet computer users to access the Web or FTP server in the LAN, it is difficult to use the proxy server to access the Internet. Another example is to achieve hybrid access of multiple broadband lines (such as private networks, residential broadband, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, and other carriers ), A complete load balancing mechanism and multi-Wan management are required, and the proxy server does not have specific functions.

It can be seen that the Internet access of proxy servers is only a suitable option for developing information-based enterprise networks and is not an ideal solution. To solve this problem, we need a dedicated broadband access device, Enterprise broadband router. The Enterprise Broadband Router is a network access device just launched in recent years. Due to the popularity of broadband, the enterprise's broadband network has developed rapidly. However, traditional devices and solutions have many inconveniences, to meet new application requirements, Enterprise broadband routers have emerged. It is an independent hardware device.

Enterprise broadband routers are developed based on SOHO routers and IP sharing devices. Foreign enterprises have adopted this widely, and domestic enterprises are gradually paying attention to this. Foreign companies, such as Cisco and Xin Xiang in China, are early companies involved in this field. As Cisco products have not yet entered the Chinese market, the author uses the "Xin Xiang" product "NuR8021 as an example to describe the features of this enterprise Broadband Router and the application characteristics of the network solution. In actual use, the biggest benefit of the Broadband Router solution is that it not only saves a high-configuration computer that originally used as the Broadband Router gateway, but also saves a long process of software installation and debugging. When a user accesses the Internet in a LAN, the connection response speed is significantly faster and the performance is stable than that through the proxy server. The user can access the Internet at any time on demand. At present, the bandwidth router is generally small in size, and the power consumption is also small, suitable for online work after a long start, and does not occupy space, and the price is much cheaper than a high-configuration proxy server.

In other functions, such as DOS prevention, IP filtering, and other security mechanisms, as well as DHCP, DMZ, virtual servers, and DDNS, proxy servers are more complex to implement, more third-party software is required. Some practical and special applications, such as the "Xin Xiang" Multi-Wan port Broadband Router, in an internal network with more than two broadband external lines, such as several ADSL or optical fiber access, multi-Wan port broadband routers enable the load balancing mechanism to bind multiple lines for the unified use of internal networks, which not only improves the access speed, but also simplifies network management, at the same time, it also provides a secure backup method, which plays an incomparable role. This is all difficult to achieve in the proxy server network solution.

To sum up, there are a lot of inconveniences and restrictions on accessing the Internet through the server proxy. It is a typical simple, inexpensive access method, which is actually complicated and expensive. Therefore, I suggest using Enterprise broadband routers to share the internet. This method is convenient, practical, fast, and targeted. It can completely free up servers, give full play to server efficiency, and fully run ERP, finance, inventory and other information management software to build a stable and reliable modern enterprise network.