WinGate
WinGate Proxy Server is a powerful and fast HTTP Proxy server and also serves as a communications server, SOCKS server, and integrated internet gateway developed to meet the security, access control, and communication requirements of modern businesses. Besides being bundled with many features, you can select any of the available licenses based on your needs. The licenses are suitable for a home network, enterprise, and small business.
The core features include improving the network responsiveness and performance through DNS and Web caching, Reduction in administration burdens on internal networks, and blocking spam, viruses, and inappropriate content from getting inside your network. It allows you to monitor usage in real-time and maintain per-service and per-user audit logs. Also, you can use it to protect servers from external or internal attacks, implement flexible and advanced access control and acceptable use policies.
Other than features, it also offers many benefits like improved reliability, efficiency, and responsiveness of network access, Reduction in time and resources needed to maintain network integrity, better employee productivity through reduced time wastage, and fewer Employer liabilities. WinGate Proxy Server is enriched with a packet-inspecting firewall to ensure maximum security.
You can improve network security via optional plug-in components for scanning all the incoming data for viruses or filtering bad content in web traffic. Another worth mentioning feature is the user database and policies, which can be used by administrators to control and limit internet access. It helps enforce this through auditing, logging, and history and real-time activity viewer to examine in-depth records of user activities.
WinGate Alternatives
#1 Apache Traffic Server
Apache Traffic Server is a high-performance, extensible, and scalable proxy server compliant with HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1. Previously, it was just a commercial product owned by Yahoo, who later gave it as a donation to the Apache Foundation. It is the favorite choice of many content owners and CDNs. The software is super-fast and is able to scale without issues on modern SMP hardware with the ability to handle dozens of requests per second.
One of its prominent features is Caching, in which you can improve your response time while decreasing bandwidth and server load requirements by reusing and caching commonly-requested web service calls, web pages, and images. It gives great flexibility in Proxying by enabling you to add keep-alive, anonymize or filter content requests, or add load balancing via a proxy layer.
The proxy server comes with APIs, which allow everyone with development knowledge to write their custom plugins to accomplish various goals like modifying HTTP headers and writing a cache algorithm. It has a proven track record and was able to easily handle more than 400TB a day at Yahoo for reverse and forward proxies. It is a battle-hardened Traffic Server, and you can find out about corporate users and supports on the Customers page.
#2 Squid Proxy Server
Squid is an FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS compliant Caching Proxy Server for the Web. It lessens the bandwidth and enhances response times by reusing and caching commonly-requested web pages. It makes a great server accelerator and comes with extensive access controls. It is compatible with all the major operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows. The solution is the primary choice of many Internet Providers to give the best possible web access to their users.
It improves performance by optimizing the data flow between server and client and preserves bandwidth by caching frequently-used content. The prominent feature is that it is capable of routing content requests to servers in multiple ways to build cache server hierarchies for optimizing network throughput.
Many websites across the Internet make use of Squid to maximize their content delivery. You can also improve server speeds to clients and lower server load. Another area of usage is delivering content from around the world, in which only the content being used is copied instead of copying everything inefficiently. Lastly, you can easily build content clusters to route using the provided content routing configuration and also use the variety of web servers to load balance requests.
#3 3proxy
3proxy tiny free proxy server is a set of freeware proxy servers compatible with multiple platforms like Unix and Microsoft Windows. It comes with an FTP and HTTPS compliant HTTP proxy as well as a Live Messenger / MSN messenger proxy, SOCKSv4/SOCKSv4.5/SOCKSv5 proxy, FTP proxy, UDP, and TCP portmappers, ICQ/AIM proxy, POP3 proxy, and SMTP proxy. It gives you the possibility of using each proxy as either a combined program or as a standalone program.
The benefit of choosing a combined proxy is an increase in the features like ODBC logging, access control, syslog, bandwidth limiting, proxy chaining, and limiting monthly/daily/weekly traffic amounts, and more. It is developed as simple, lightweight, and fully functional. You can easily compile it with gcc or Visual C and has been tested under different operating systems, including Solaris 10/i386, Linux/PPC, NetBSD/i386, Mac OS X/PPC, and Microsoft Windows 7, 98, Vista, 2000, 2008, and NT. Finally, 3proxy is open-source and is released under the GNU/GPL license.
#4 Gate.js
Gate.js is an open-source forward and reverse proxy based on JavaScript and provides high capability and performance. It is released under the GPL-3.0 License. Before beginning the installation procedure, you have to ensure that NodeJS version 4 or above is installed on the computer. The installation can be initiated using SUDO or from git. After everything’s done, you can get started right away. The GitHub page provides a detailed Forward proxy configuration example that you can copy and paste for easy implementation.
#5 CCProxy
CCProxy is a simple yet powerful Proxy Server solution for Windows that supports DDN, ISDN, DSL, optical fiber, DSL, and dial-up connections. It gives you the opportunity to create your own proxy server and easily and efficiently shares Internet connections within the LAN. The software can serve as SOCKS, HTTP, telnet, mail, FTP, and HTTPS proxy server. The features include advanced account management functions such as time control, Internet access control, content filtering, bandwidth control, and Internet web filtering.
Other characteristics include bandwidth usage statistics and access logging functions, online cache monitoring, and Web caching. CCProxy Works perfectly fine with Windows Vista, 7, XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. It is mostly used for Windows Internet Sharing like Win 7 Internet sharing, Windows XP Internet Sharing, and more. The software was developed for the purpose of modem sharing within a LAN but later extended to support satellite sharing, sharing an internet connection, wifi internet sharing, DSL sharing, parent proxy server connection sharing, and more.
#6 FreeProxy
FreeProxy is a multi-featured Proxy Server compatible with Microsoft Windows. It comes with many features such as a built-in web server, HTTP cache, Internet connection sharing with demand dialing, URL and IP address filtering from imported Ban Lists, Works with Dial-up Networking and Cable/Broadband, Access controlled by calendar and user, NNTP proxy, Message logging, and dumping, SMTP & POP email proxy, Remote access to display user statistics, TCP tunnel, Comprehensive and configurable access logs, Connect to MSN and ICQ easily, Run as a service under Windows 98/Me, Win 2003/NT/XP/2000, HTTP cache, SOCKS5, and Hotmail/Outlook Express email proxy.
#7 JanaServer (Jana)
JanaServer (Jana) is a feature-rich proxy server that enables LAN members or all the participants of a LAN to obtain access to the Internet through ISDL, DSL, or Modem connection. Before trying this out, you must install the program on the PC that is capable of accessing the internet using a DSL adapter, installed modem, or ISDN. There is no need to install other programs on the LAN computers.
The JanaServer (Jana) is a powerful email server that can be used by everyone on the local net to send emails to each other and also to send emails over the Internet. There is no requirement of having the same email provider, allowing everyone to use their favorite one. The proxy server is integrated with an HTTP Server to serve as an intranet or allow the testing of local websites. Other functionalities include DNS forwarder, FTP server, and gateway functions for custom gateways, FTP programs, Newsreader, and Telent.
It is easy to install, preserves previous settings, and supports multiple languages like Croatian, German, Chinese, English, Spanish, Czech, Italian, Hungarian, and French. It provides Administrator friendly log files/monitoring with 11 different log files, Systray icon, color-coded status indication, and Java-applet-monitor. JanaServer (Jana) offers Personalised User Management and allows restriction for Time range for weekdays, Specify blocked or permitted internet sites, Maximum hours per week/day, By IP address or IP range, By user name, and Individual access rights for gateway and proxy. Even more, features are available, and these include Help, documentation and support, Connection management, and Server.
#8 Lusca
Lusca is an open-source solution that acts as a fork of the Squid -2 development tree compatible with Linux and Microsoft Windows. It is developed to solve the gaps in the Squid-2 codebase while retaining the stability and functionality of Squid -2. The solution is released under the GNU GPL v2 license. As it is open-source, you can install it and use it without paying any fees. Furthermore, as development progresses, new versions will be released to enhance the user experience.