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Product Summary

SpoonProxy™

What is SpoonProxy?

SpoonProxy is an affordable yet industrial-strength proxy server written by veteran Pi-Soft programmer Shawn Stanley. It is perfect for small businesses or individuals who need to connect their entire TCP/IP LAN to the internet but don't want to spend hundreds of dollars and buy new hardware in order to accommodate this level of functionality.

How do I set it up?

There really isn't any setup necessary for basic proxy operations. Simply download the setup program into the directory of your choice and run the executable. Then startup the SpoonProxy program on a machine that has a direct connection to the internet in order for other users on your LAN to access the internet through the proxy. SpoonProxy will work with any type of internet connection from analogue modems, to ISDN modems, cable modems and even T-1 internet connections.

What changes do I make in my client software in order to make it work?

Here are the default port settings (as of version 2.4 of SpoonProxy) you should use in your client software (Netscape, Internet Explorer, Eudora, CRT, etc.)

• For Internet Explorer, set FTP, HTTP & Security Port by going to View, Options, Connection and check the box marked "Connect Using a Proxy Server." The settings should be entered under the advanced tab according to the port map below.

• For Netscape, go to Options, Network Preferences, Proxies and select "Manual Proxy Configuration." And set your IP's and ports appropriately according to the port map below.

FTP Port: 8021
HTTP Port 8080
HTTPS Port: 8081 (Sometimes called SSL)
Telnet Port: 8023

Please note that even these basic port settings are configurable through the port settings tab available on the Properties menu.

You may map as many incoming and outgoing ports as you like using the TCP map. Click on the following link for a listing of most of the major default TCP and UDP ports covering major services such as News (NNTP), POP3, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, whois, finger, etc. Click here for port list.

Please read our Compatibility FAQs for helpful information on setting up SpoonProxy with various types of clients. We are in the process of adding to these FAQs on client configurations with the help of users. Also, please consult your client documentation and their respective webpages for help on configuration. SpoonProxy is compliant with most client standards and many clients provide their own instructions for proxy configurations.

Setting Up POP3 and SMTP Mail with SpoonProxy

POP3 Proxy Quick Start

As long as you're not running a mail server on the same machine you're running SpoonProxy on you can simply use the TCP/IP Map tab to map ports 110 and 25 in and out to the IP's of your POP3 and SMTP mail servers respectively.

If you need to know the IP's of your mail servers, ping their friendly names (i.e. mail.home.com) from the DOS or command prompt on an internet connected machine. If you don't know the friendly names of your POP3 and SMTP servers, ask your internet service provider and they'll be happy to provide you with that information.

Point your mail client (Eudora, Pegasus, Outlook, Netscape) at the INTERNAL IP of the machine you're running SpoonProxy on. (That would be the IP of that machine as it appears on your network.) Use that IP in your mail client's configuration windows for both your POP3 and SMTP servers.

Note: If you are using advanced services through your mail client, such as Kerberos or a password changer, those will require further mapping on the TCP Map.

(If you are running your own mail server, we'd suggest you use port 1110 in for POP3 and port 1025 for SMTP, leaving port out settings at their defaults. You will then need to use your mail client's advanced configuration option to tell it you are using POP3 and SMTP on those nonstandard ports. Please note that not all mail clients at the time of writing have the ability to use nonstandard ports.)

Using the SpoonProxy POP3 Proxy.

Mapping multiple POP3 and SMTP servers with SpoonProxy.

Client Programs which work with SpoonProxy

SpoonProxy is known to work with the following internet clients.   Internet clients with specific instruction sets for SpoonProxy are hyper-linked

Audiogalaxy, ICQ, AOL 4.0, AOL 5.0, AOL Instant Messenger, BattleNet, CoffeeCup Direct FTP, CUSeeMe, DNS, Eudora 5.0, FrontPage 98, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Netscape Mail,  CuteFTP, Hotmail, Lotus Notes, Napster, Pegasus, Outlook, Outlook 2000, Outlook Express 5.0, pcANYWHERE, mIRC, PIRCH, Quake III, Quicken 99, Telnet Clients, RealAudio, Norton AntiVirus Live Update, SQL Server, Webdrive, WS_FTP, Yahoo Messenger

UDP Support in SpoonProxy

In an IP network, TCP and UDP are common transport layer protocols. While TCP provides a connection-oriented, reliable, full-duplex byte-stream service to an application, UDP provides a connectionless, unreliable datagram service. In other words, UDP datagrams are not guaranteed delivery, although they can be delivered with much less overhead than with TCP..

(With the example of a RealAudio server, imagine requests coming into the server while packets of audio data are being sent out to many clients. To have connections with every single client would be cumbersome, and to deal with guaranteed delivery over a network that is not guaranteed to be stable can bog down a busy server.)

SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 Support in SpoonProxy

SpoonProxy supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5.

SOCKS extends the capabilities of your private network's internet connectivity by enabling some client software that might have trouble connecting to the internet from behind a proxy to communicate almost transparently with other internet clients.

To use SOCKS, we recommend either of the following two freeware programs.  Both programs are designed for installation your network's client machines.

1. Sockscap from NEC automatically enables Windows-based TCP and UDP networking client applications to traverse a SOCKS firewall. SocksCap intercepts the networking calls from WinSock applications and redirects them through the SOCKS server without any modification to the original applications or to the operating system software or drivers.

2. The Hummingbird SOCKS client seamlessly "socksifies" any TCP/IP application eliminating the need to re-code "SOCKS-aware" applications.  Because the Hummingbird SOCKS client is more difficult to configure than SocksCap, we have assembled our own Hummingbird/SpoonProxy configuration instructions.

SOCKS support in SpoonProxy is enabled by default on port 1080. To turn it off, change the port to 0.

This is a shareware product. How do I register it and what if I don't?

SpoonProxy is fully-functional in this trial version and will not expire. However, it is limited to one concurrent user connection at a time until registration and SOCKS and RealAudio support will stop working after 30 days. In other words, if you have ten machines on your network and both Betty in Purchasing and Joe in Sales attempt to access the internet through SpoonProxy at exactly the same time, one of them will be able to get access to the Dilbert homepage while the other will receive a polite reminder message that the network administrator should register SpoonProxy and that they should try again in a moment or two.

So, for a small two machine home network, SpoonProxy is basically free.

If you run a small network and fall outside of our licensing requirements but still find SpoonProxy to be a great product, send us a postcard, an email, some money, anything to show your appreciation. It takes time and money for us to continue to develop what we feel is a terrific product. Your support helps ensure continued development.

If you're using SpoonProxy in a business environment where multi-user simultaneous access is crucial, read on, you're still in for a great deal.

SpoonProxy Pricing

Effective January 2, 2002, SpoonProxy pricing is as follows: (These prices are available only to users of version 2.6 and higher.)

There is no additional charge to upgrade to our current version from an earlier version of SpoonProxy.

We challenge you to compare our prices against the prices of similar products. We think you'll find SpoonProxy to be the best value on the market today.

Furthermore, SpoonProxy takes considerably less memory to run than every Proxy Server we've benchmarked it against, so it's very likely you'll be able to implement SpoonProxy on your network without need for a hardware upgrade of the machine you're using to run it from.

Registration Information:

Online Registration - All Major Credit Cards

Or

Send a check or money order in US dollars to:

Pi-Soft Consulting, LLC
5115 Excelsior Boulevard, #430
Minneapolis, MN 55416

For your registration code to be generated include: (1) A Username and (2) An Organization or Company Name.

Upon receipt of your check, a registration key will be e-mailed to you promptly, so please be sure you include your e-mail address.

Additional Helpful tips on using SpoonProxy:

• The absolute #1 request for support we get from customers regards how to setup their TCP/IP network. We cannot emphasize enough that in order for SpoonProxy or any proxy server to operate properly (in fact, at all) your internal TCP/IP network must be configured properly. This means that each network node on your system must be pingable from each other node by its IP address alone. The IP address which you point your client software at is the internal IP address of the machine on which you're running the proxy server. If you are having trouble setting up your TCP/IP Network, see some simple instructions on Configuring a simple 3 machine TCP/IP Network.

• If you are having trouble with your internal TCP/IP network as mentioned above, we recommend the following configuration. Set your subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and use 192.168.0.1,192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3, (etc.) as the IP's for your internal network. This is a block of 256 contiguous class C network numbers which the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved for private internets as per RFC 1918 (Address Allocation for Private Internets)

• For help in troubleshooting your own TCP/IP problems, see our list of common WinSock error codes.

• To setup your Macintosh computer to use SpoonProxy on your TCP/IP network please use our reference for configuring MacTCP.

• Proxy Server logs can grow quite large quite quickly. Logging defaults to on. You should disable this feature if logging is unnecessary or if you are running SpoonProxy on a machine with minimal diskspace.

• To minimize SpoonProxy to the taskbar or to open it up when minimized to the taskbar simply click on the spoon.