About the Web Proxy

The ISA Server Web proxy supports requests from any browser that conforms to standards of the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN). The Web proxy allows Web access to nearly every desktop operating system, including Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Macintosh, and UNIX.

The ISA Server Web proxy works at the application level on behalf of an HTTP client requesting an Internet object retrievable through one of the protocols supported by the filter: FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and Gopher. The Web proxy protects all Web browser access. The Web proxy operates with a Web proxy client, which can be any client computer that uses CERN-compliant applications and is configured to use the ISA Server Web proxy.

A server running Internet Information Services (IIS) can be installed on an ISA Server computer, but this is not required. For more information on IIS and ISA Server, see Internet Information Services Separation.

You can use the secure Web publishing feature of ISA Server in conjunction with Internet Information Services (IIS) or other Web servers to publish to the Internet without compromising the security of your internal network. ISA Server uses Secure Web publishing and reverse hosting to send requests to Web-publishing servers connected behind the ISA Server Web proxy computer. The ISA Server Web proxy supports the use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and also supports Web (ISAPI) filters.

The ISA Server Web proxy includes the ISA Server cache, described in About the ISA Server Cache.