Comments on: Ubuntu and The University of Nottingham’s Proxy

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:40:10 +0000

Nice one mate, thanks!

Just a minor syntax correction - you need to get rid of those double quotes in the bash configuration command. Correct syntax is:

export http_proxy=http://snsproxy.nottingham.ac.uk:8080

By: Panikos

Panikos — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:04:35 +0000

Best method for large files (and overcoming other limitations) is to tunnel through the proxy. As to the details of how i wont go into that because if you cant figure it out i think you shouldnt be trying it to begin with. several ways are possible though.

in answer to how i got the list of ips for the finjan proxies = trial and error + some scripting.

the easiest possible solution is to set wwwcache.nottingham.ac.uk/proxy.pac then visit something like whatismyip.com and keep refreshing, lol!!

By: admin

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:00:02 +0000

You can use the university computers to download large files, as they use a different proxy server that doesn't bother with that scanning business - then transfer it to a pen drive and delete it from the computer you used.

That's my method, anyhow !

By: john

john — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:08:38 +0000

Trying to download my £30 copy of windows 7 pro from http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-uk/default.aspx but the nottingham system won’t let me download anything over 1gb…..and the lady on the phone at sns help basically giggled and said there’s no way I’m getting that file. Well of course there is a way I can get it, but I’d rather SNS supported legitimate downloads of microsoft promotions.

By: John

John — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:30:58 +0000

Last year was so frustrating because everyone had paid full whack for their connection, but noone was getting an adequate service. There was seemingly no feedback or customer satisfaction requests from SNS, and indeed no official guarantees of service provision, unlike broadband companies. It SNS got cut off for say 2 weeks due to staff incompetence (or lack of forward planning) it would be interesting to see whether students could reclaim some of their SNS fee.

Sure, it's no easy task to run a network for X 000s of students, but I would think that reliable and fast internet provision is one of the most sought after facilities that prospective students look for. If we were able to create a high profile campaign along the lines of 'facebook won't work at nottingham uni' etc then you can be sure the senior management would start investing in hardware.

This year hasn't been too bad, but the system's definitely starting to slow down a bit at key points. If there's any drastic changes I'll report here.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:42:57 +0000

That’s really interesting – I knew the proxy performed the lookup on behalf of the client when you have one configured, but I had never thought about it enough to wonder why.

It’s pretty frustrating that we’re forced to use these proxy servers that are so clearly overloaded, it makes browsing in the evenings a exercise in patience! I’ve been trying the proxies specified in Pakinos’ post, and it seems to be worth switching over once in a while – but how were the IPs of those machines discovered? I’m assuming that they’re the servers that receive load-balanced requests from the main proxy server that everyone configures in their browser.

By: John

John — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:19:08 +0000

Interesting discussion. I used snsproxy all of last year, found it in some obscure sns doc, but they didn’t tell everyone about it. I’ve lived on campus many years and 08/09 was rock bottom for network reliability. SNS basically admitted with facebook/youtube/iplayer they couldn’t cope. In the last few days things have got worse. The finjan scanners are terrible, they frequenty hang on file downloads, and SNS are a real pain to deal with. There are some clued up employees (Darren W) but most are typically useless. I stopped using auto proxy detect on firefox ages ago because there was a DNS hanging bug, as documented here http://kera.name/articles/2009/02/

By: admin

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:29:45 +0000

Thanks Alex, just found that out on moving in day this weekend.

I wonder if it's actually an improved proxy service this time, as it was pretty inadequate last year!

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:11:21 +0000

Hey,

Just writing this here in case anyone is following this guide and still having problems, for 09/10 instead of 128.243.253.119:8080 use snsproxy.nottingham.ac.uk:8080

Hope that helps someone,

Cheers, Alex.

By: Panikos

Panikos — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:28:35 +0000

The Finjan proxies seem to be: 128.243.253.109 128.243.253.111 128.243.253.112 128.243.253.113 128.243.253.114 128.243.253.119

They all work with varying degrees of success throughout the day (no load balancing?). Often timeout, are really slow, or get stuck on "scanning" phase during file downloads.

One more point to note is that if you need ftp access you might have to set:

export “ftp_proxy=http://proxy_server_ip:port”

alternatively you can add this to your personal bash_login so they are implemented whenever you open a shell, or to the bash default conf file so that they are applied to all user accounts on bash login.