Help with remote proxy servers

[InvidiousCourgette]

In this thread a doper was asking how to access a web site without it thinking he was in the country that he resided in. The use of a proxy server was suggested as a possible solution. I tried to help him set up an anonymous proxy thus:

Originally Posted by InvidiousCourgette

I just found this list of proxies at the bottom of this page by googling for "proxy server".

As an experiment I went into IE's Tools>Internet Options>Connections>Settings and filled in all the info for one of the anonymous proxy servers listed and enabled it. I then went to the web page what is my ip to see what IP it told me I had. It seems like it got the correct IP, and not the proxy IP.

Yabob repeated my experiment and reported that it had worked for him. I then retried with a different anonymous proxy and with both IE and Firefox, still with no joy. Can anyone explain why we were getting different results and what is happening?

Some info that might be useful: I am at home behind a Sygate software firewall with cable broadband internet access. ipconfig reports the following:

IP address: ab.c.def.ghi
Default gateway: ab.c.def.j

what is my ip reports the following:

IP address: ab.v.wxy.z

A check on this address confirms that it belongs to my internet provider.

The anonymous proxy address looks like none of the above.

I have configured the proxy in IE as follows:

Use a proxy server for this connection: ticked
Bypass proxy for local connections: unticked
Address and port for proxy: filled in
In Advanced, Use the same proxy for all connections: ticked

Thanks to anyone who can cast some light on what, to me at least, is a dark and confusing topic.

[Dog80]

You don't need just any random proxy. You need an anonymous proxy

Check these links:

http://www.samair.ru/proxy/
http://www.multiproxy.org/

[InvidiousCourgette]

Originally Posted by Dog80

You don't need just any random proxy. You need an anonymous proxy

Yes, I was using an anonymous one. There are also transparent proxies which will not hide your IP, and high anonymity proxies which transfer even less data than the anonymous type. I suspect that my requests are not being routed through the proxies I have attempted to nominate, and I am confused as to why that might be.

[yabob]

If I understand you right, whatismyip reports an IP address which is not yours, but which belongs to your ISP, and this is what you get when you don't have any proxy defined. This would indicate that your ISP is already setting up a proxy server of some sort - some of them do, so that they can perform caching themselves, and they don't always tell their customers that they are doing it. It's possible that the proxy request gets intercepted by the ISPs proxy, and never sent to the one you actually specified.