How to simulate corporate Proxy Server on my development machine

Question

I am developing a small client application that will sometimes need to call out to a webservice from a machine within a corporate lan complete with proxy server.

Our LAN in our development shop does not use a proxy.

What I need to be able to do is test being behind a proxy on my machine. Is this possible? I've installed a free proxy server (called FreeProxy) and by running it and changing my IE settings to use the proxy it works, but what I need to happen is that when I take the tick out of "Use Proxy" in IE, I should not be able to access the web. Also no client apps should be able to access the web without going through my proxy.

Looking forward to your replies.

Answer 1

You could have an isolated operating system instance in a virtual machine, which gets access to internet only through a proxy. When you need to test, move the app into the OS inside the virtual machine and see how it behaves.

Answer 2

Since you've already got some sort of LAN setup, you could extend that with some sort of internal proxy.

Stick a machine on the main LAN, and then have that linked to another (new) small scale LAN (got a old 4-port hub laying about?). Configure this machine to emulate the production enviroment proxy, and then you just hook up a test machine to the "extended" LAN - where it is only possible to connect using the proxy machine you've configured.

Requires a bit of extra hardware and effort, but is the "real" alternative to using a few VM's.