André Fischer

Punching Through a Recalcitrant Windows Proxy

So you’re behind a dreadful Windows Proxy that makes using tools such as ruby’s package manager gem unusable because of the arcane authentication protocols used.

(If you didn’t get what I meant just there, don’t worry, you probably don’t need what this article is about.)

The problem I’m talking about is having to use an application that only supports basic authentication at the proxy, in the form http://username:password@proxy:port. This does not work for most of those poxy Windows proxies.

Enter cntlm. This is a proxy that you install locally, and that you point your applications to. It runs as a service under Windows (and other OSes, though I’ve not had the misfortune of having to try them) and handles the translation of the authentication for you.

Furthermore, it lets you create tunnels, so that talking to localhost:someport will connect you to distanthost:someotherport through the offending Windows proxy.

For more information, see the cntlm page on SourceForge.