Define the server

Caching Proxy typically runs as a background process on a host computer system that is configured to perform as a network server. This process is associated with (bound to) one or all active Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on the host computer system. It listens for various Internet protocols, such as FTP and HTTP, on specified ports and performs actions on these requests in accordance with its behavioral configuration. (For more information, refer to Configuring Caching Proxy behavior.)

By default, Caching Proxy assumes the name of its host computer system. You can override this default behavior by deliberately specifying a host name for the proxy server. In order to bind Caching Proxy to a specific IP address, the host name of the proxy server must be changed to equal that IP address.

Note:
In the event that the proxy server attempts to bind to an IP address, and that host name is not set to an available IP address, the bind will fail and the proxy server will listen on all available IP addresses.

The host name of the proxy server does not affect how client traffic is resolved. The proxy server does not compare its own host name with the value of the host name argument in the header of the HTTP request. The host name of the proxy server is occasionally incorporated into dynamically generated local content pages, such as error messages. It is also passed backed to the requested client as the value of the Via argument in the HTTP header.

The proxy server can be configured to replace the host name of the requesting client with the host name of the proxy server prior to passing the request on to the destination server. Doing so forces the destination server to maintain the communication channel through the proxy server, rather than establishing a direct connection with the client.

Define the proxy server process by specifying the physical location of the proxy server files on the host computer system, the name with which proxy server refers to itself, and the ports on which it listens as values for the ServerRoot, Hostname, and Port directives. If the host has multiple IP addresses, the proxy server can be bound to a specific address by setting the value of the BindSpecific directive to On and setting the value of the Hostname directive equal to the IP address.

An administration port provides a method of accessing the Configuration and Administration forms and maintaining the server. To provide access to the proxy server through an administration port, specify a value for the AdminPort directive. Requests received on the administration port are not queued with requests received on the standard port. Mapping rules can be written to allow access to the Configuration and Administration forms through this port.

When the BindSpecific directive is enabled, Caching Proxy is bound to the port specified by the Port directive along with the IP address derived from the value of the Hostname directive. The port specified by the AdminPort directive is bound to all IP addresses available on the system.

To override the default name of the server that is running, such as IBM-PROXY or IBM_HTTP_SERVER, specify a value for HeaderServerName directive. This value populates the HTTP response server field.

To improve proxy performance, the value of the PureProxy directive can be set to on. This completely disables all caching functionality.