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Force use of ISP proxy
If your provider operates a firewall which does not allow direct communication with the
Internet, it may be necessary to handle all requests using their proxy server. Please
activate the option in this case. Otherwise SX-GATE assumes a caching proxy used
to speed up the Internet connection.
In this mode the SX-GATE web proxy optimises the forwarding of requests. SX-GATE
will forward only those requests which might be cached by the provider's proxy. For
requests that may not be cached anyway, a direct connection to the target web server
will be established instead. As an example files may not be cached if user authentication
is necessary to download them. Also encrypted (https) connections may not be cached.
Use SMTP relay server of ISP
Send outgoing emails via mail relay server of ISP
Outgoing emails can either be sent directly to the email server of the recipient or via
the mail relay server of your provider. The job of a relay server is to accept emails from
mail clients or other mail servers and forward them to the mail server of the recipient
or maybe an other relay server.
Direct connections are often preferred with leased lines, as the delivery state of an
email can be directly controlled at "Monitoring > Mail server".
However with dial-up connections, you can derive benefits from the relay server offered
by your provider. Some examples:
Due to the SPAM mail plague some mail server administrators decided to accept an
email only if it fulfills certain criteria. For example a mail might be rejected if it is sent
from an IP address which was identified to be a dynamic IP of a dial-up connection.
If you are charged for the time, the dial-up connection is online, using the mail-relay
server of your Internet access provider can save you money. Usually the connection
to the relay server or your Internet access provider is very fast, so an email will pass
the dial-up line very quickly. The mail relay server will then have to take care about the
delivery to the recipient. A direct delivery could take significantly longer, depending on
the quality of the connection across the Internet. Even worse the connection could be
so bad that it is interrupted, so the email has to be retransmitted several times through
the dial-up line.