# Best way to bypass work proxy?



## EhevuTov (Jul 21, 2010)

My work network blocks port 80 and they hard-code our windows machines to go to a proxy. However, my FreeBSD machine at work (that I'm discrete about) can't authenticate properly with the work proxy. This keeps me from accessing ports and updates which is really important to me. I do have a freeBSD box at home that I could VPN to, but I'd rather not do that unless I have to since I do some SNMP programming on our local work network and I don't want to hassle with separating different subnets.

My question is...what program should I use and with what kind of configuration? I don't need a lot of detail most likey: a sentence or two will probably do the trick. Thanks you!


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## vivek (Jul 21, 2010)

Try

```
export http_proxy='http://user:password@server.ip.address:port/'
```
Another options is prtunnel, http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/updating-freebsd-source-tree-via-proxyserver/


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## EhevuTov (Jul 21, 2010)

Thank you Vivek, but it didn't work. My password contains an '@' character and it conflicts with the other '@' character of the http_proxy string, I believe. That's what I was referring to when I said I tried it once before and never could get it to work.

Any other suggestions?


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## EhevuTov (Aug 1, 2010)

I've tried every environment variable I've seen. What would be the best VPN solution to connect my work fBSD box to my home fBSD box?


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## Savagedlight (Aug 4, 2010)

I don't know if this will work, but it's worth a shot.
Have you tried escaping the @ character with a \?
Such as this: 

```
http://username:pw\@yeah@somehost:someport/
```


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## EhevuTov (Aug 4, 2010)

Savagedlight said:
			
		

> I don't know if this will work, but it's worth a shot.
> Have you tried escaping the @ character with a \?
> Such as this:
> 
> ...



That's a good point but yes, I've tried that, even using the urlencode and it didn't work. I also tried various http_auth variables to no avail.


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## EhevuTov (Aug 5, 2010)

I fixed it. I had a testing error. I wasn't using a network program that was using HTTP! I was doing a 'telnet google.com 80' incorrectly assuming port 80 was HTTP...but telnet doesn't communicate in HTTP of course  . So, I just used wget for testing, which uses HTTP and it now works fine. I'm doing regular public proxying and I'll be testing authentication later.

Thank you all for your insight and help!


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## alphajim (Aug 6, 2010)

EhevuTov said:
			
		

> I fixed it. I had a testing error. I wasn't using a network program that was using HTTP! I was doing a 'telnet google.com 80' incorrectly assuming port 80 was HTTP...but telnet doesn't communicate in HTTP of course  . So, I just used wget for testing, which uses HTTP and it now works fine. I'm doing regular public proxying and I'll be testing authentication later.
> 
> Thank you all for your insight and help!



Actually if you weren't behind a firewall, you could telnet to port 80 or any http listener and issue http commands.  It's a text based protocol.  Same with smtp.  I do it whenever I need to see if a webserver is really up vs just pinging when I'm in a shell.  I test firewall rules that way too.  Of course it won't play nice with the proxy.

BTW, do they allow outbound ssh?  Lots easier to set up ad hoc port forwarding than to set up a vpn, and risk linking your networks.


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