When employing a proxy server to regulate and divide internet connections to the computers on your network, it is prudent to completely understand the policies of your company fully before you configure proxy settings. The proxy settings should conform to any IT and security policies that your firm has in place. To configure proxy without consulting the policies that are legal and in writing could leave aspects of liability in the use of the computers on your network. If your company has a strict policy regarding internet use, you will want to configure proxy to abide by those tight regulations on browsing the web. Some companies only allow free internet use during a lunch break, so in a case where that is the rule, you could configure proxy to unrestrict web access to all connected users between twelve and one or approximately thereabouts.
Other considerations to make when you configure proxy are more technical in nature. There are many settings to tweak when you configure proxy, and having a good plan in place and testing the proxy server before putting it into production is good practice. A development environment is a great and thorough way to test a proxy server in actual use, where how you configure proxy can be tried out without having an effect on production systems. Once you have established how to configure proxy by testing it in a development scenario, you can be certain the settings that you have in place will function as expected once in a production scenario. The ways that you can configure proxy can and will have profound effects on internet connectivity for the client computers that connect. The careful planning of the way you configure proxy will ensure that the final result of how your users access the web is the way you and your policies intend.
