proxy capabilities (2000/7/21)

IP address host name port this proxy listens on ports it will CONNECT to external access additional protocols understood proxy type
203.55.161.10spunky.ion.com.au82119openSquid/2.2.STABLE5
194.126.101.250cache-engine.estpak.ee808080, 119open
193.174.11.217squirrel.owl.de3343480, 119, 443open

The table is essentially a tristate logic thing. Green indicates success, red indicates failure and no entry indicates something which I haven't tested yet. For example a list of green port numbers indicates I have tested ONLY those and they work; 'all' in red indicates all failed.

A list of port numbers and what they're usually used for:

Some news servers (the port 119 entries) can be CONNECTed to, while others cannot. The tests get a bit flaky here.

Outlook Express and Hotmail accounts

If PROPFIND is understood by the proxy (green), the proxy can be used to get your hotmail via Outlook Express. The test used was: PROPFIND http://law3.oe.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/hmdata/cherry@hotmail.com/folders/ HTTP/1.0

You'll need to ensure that Outlook Express is using one of these. This is not easy because Outlook Express uses the same proxy settings your browser uses. The simplest way is to change your web browser proxy to the proxy IP address, close the browser, close OE (if it's open) and restart OE. Remember to restore your favorite browser proxy later, if it was an external one.

A better way is to use the autoconfig script for the browser to specify the proxy from this table for use by any hotmail accesses from OE. This way you can have your external (maybe randomized, local tunnels or whatever) proxies used by the web browser, while the special proxies are used by OE when needed. I'll post this if anyone wants it, but you need to supply it to Internet Explorer via a web server. I usually use the default one in windows NT4 and NT5/2000. I think win98 users have one as well. If anyone can tell me how to feed a simple proxy.pac file to IE5 without a web server, I'll be eternally grateful!. Microsoft says you can do it. Netscape doesn't seem to have this requirement, so this is one advantage for users of this old thing.

Update (00/6/24): If you specify proxy1.emirates.net.ae in the IE proxy settings, it will resolve to one of several proxies, all of which now understand PROPFIND. This was not the case before.