How do I access the internet through an ISA Server proxy?

June 19, 2008 11:15 AM

I have an application installed on my PC at work that needs to connect to the internet through our ISA Server. The problem it has is that it can't connect directly unless I put in proxy settings. The problem that I have is that the proxy setting is just one long URL with no username or password. How can I get this application to connect?

Whenever I connect to the internet with a browser (IE and Firefox) on the work computer (Windows XP) I need to use http://isa.uk.mycompany.com:8080/array.dll?Get.Routing.Script as the automatic proxy configuration URL in the preferences otherwise it refuses to connect.

The application I want to connect to the internet uses HTTP and gives me three options for the proxy: "use default", "direct" and "named proxy". "Use default" and "direct" don't work.

"Named proxy" requires me to enter a proxy server, username and password. I'm guessing that my windows username and password would be for the latter two, but I have no idea what to put for the proxy server.

I've tried putting the long URL in, but that doesn't work. The problem appears to be that it is expecting a server name, not a port number and certainly not a path to a script.

I tried pasting the URL into a browser and it downloaded what looked to be about 300 lines of VB Script. There was nothing in there that gave me much of a clue on what I should use. I also tried running the VB script from the command line but nothing was outputted.

Can anyone offer any insights into what I need to do to work out what the proxy server name would be? Failing that, what else can I do?

posted by mr_silver to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Using the autoconfig URL in your browser and studying the output is the proper approach if you want to solve the problem by yourself rather than ask your IT folks what the actual name and port of your proxy server is. The code you are seeing (which I believe is actually JavaScript) is what is run to determine how to connect to the machine in question. i.e. if desired URL is foo.bar.com use Proxy proxy1.bar.com, else if url is example.com use Proxy proxy2.bar.com etc.

The operative phrases that you should look for are things like

"PROXY blahblah.example.com:8080"

Where blahblah.example.com is your proxy host name and 8080 is the port. There are a lot of other things in here but that is the simple, common case. However, since this is a real programming environment, some details can be obscured through variables, string concatenation, etc.

good luck.
posted by mmascolino at 11:33 AM on June 19, 2008

Best answer: Hey, I know you posted this question a long time ago, but I just found it while searching for something else so I'll throw this out there:

If you have admin on your computer, then you could try installing the Microsoft Firewall Client instead of manually specifying proxy settings. This is the MS client software for ISA and it is designed for no config network deployment, so it should just install and then autodetect the right proxy server by itself. It works (on a global level) by hooking into winsock and then redirecting any outbound packets it sees to ISA (or not, if it has been configured to ignore certain destinations). However, if your ISA implementation is not configured for the client or your network infrastructure is complicated, then some stuff (like custom routes) might break. If that's the case you can just uninstall it and restart.

Note that the fact you are using the Firewall Client, what apps you are using, and how much bandwidth they are eating will be extremely apparent to your IT group after you install this thing (which is, after all, one of the reasons they have ISA in the first place). If you have other things on your computer that you would rather they not know about, or you aren't supposed to be messing around with things, then you definitely don't want to install this.
posted by tracert at 8:59 AM on September 12, 2008