Set up a proxy with Firefox 3.6.9

Never had the need to use a proxy in my life until I was faced with this screen stating "This clip has been blocked in your region."

The though that this viewable clip was rendered unviewable to me must have really gotten on to my nerve...

As a result, I decided to set up a proxy for my firefox browser last night and, after an entire evening's struggle, I was finally able to play the blocked clip... (even though I actually had no idea what the clip was about... other than it is an episode of the Korean Drama... 8-O lol)

While the process of setting up a proxy is a no-brainer, the biggest challenge I encounter was to find a proxy server in China that I could connect to.

The first question that came to my mind was... where do I find a free proxy server in China to connect to?

Google it... with key words such as Proxy China... and you will find many websites providing you with a list of proxy servers.  Most of these websites will provide you information in the IP address, port number and location of the server.

Take the information in this picture for instance, the first column contains numbers seperated by "." (period) and ":" (semi-colon).  The second column tells you that these are HTTP proxcy servers.  The last column tells you the location.

The most important information you need is the info provided in the first column.  The IP address and the port number are seperated by the ":" semi-colon.  Take the following set of numbers that I made up for instance:

123.213.56.17:9415

"123.213.56.17" is the IP address
"9415" is the port number

Now that you know how to locate the IP address (the address of your computer over the internet) and the port number for the proxy server, the next step is to put these info to work.

To be honest, all that you have to do is to find the "Connection Settings" window and type in the IP address of the proxy server in China and the port number.  Unfortunately, how you could get to this window is dependent on the version of Firefox you use.

Take Firefox browser version 3.6.9 for instance...

Click on "Tool" and select "Options"

Once the Options window opens, click "Advanced".

Under the Advanced section, switch to the "Network" tab and click "Settings".

The Connection Settings window will open.

Check the option of Manual proxy configuration so that you can put down the IP address inside of the textbox next to HTTP Proxy and the port number next to the word: Port.  When this is done click "OK" to exit out from all these windows.

Voila!  C'est ça!

Yet, don't get too excited!  Many of them proxies listed fail to connect... Other times, the connection would drop dead after the first page or two loaded....

In addition, you can use websites such as IP-address, or whatismyip to check your IP address and the location of the proxy server,

Personally, my preference is ip-adress.com because it also tell you where "you are located".

This function is very helpful because sometimes, although the listing tells you that the proxy server is in China, it might end up being identified as in Indonesia... and... happened many a time....  Unfortunately,  what I wanted to connect to was not a proxy in Indonesia, France or the US... rather, I want to connect to a proxy inside of China... 8-O lol

In case anyone would like to know what it be like to browse the web inside of China, the proxy I found was that of 浙江省嘉兴市 电信.  Once you have the proxy set up, you can also check out some of the websites listed in Wikipedia to see what it is like to have websites blocked.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

Gotta say, though, information literacy... Just found out in the wiki listing that "blogger.com" was not blocked though... it is blocked.