Proxy Agent
(Feature Available in Professional Edition Only)
In K-Secure VPN™, a Proxy Agent is a VPN client that makes connections on behalf of other
VPN clients. Such a Proxy Agent is useful when certain resources are accessible to only a particular
VPN client, but practically it is necessary for other VPN clients to have access to that resource as
well. The following diagram illustrates a typical use case.
In the diagram shown above, two clients, Client A and Client B, are connected to the K-Secure VPN Server.
Resource R is accessible to Client B only. In order for Client A to also have access to Resource R,
Client B needs to be designated by the K-Secure VPN Server as a Proxy Agent in the system.
In K-Secure VPN™, designating a VPN client as a Proxy Agent is done by making a
Proxy Rule - a special rule with the Proxy field set to Yes. This is shown
in the following screenshot.
In the screenshot above, the rule is named ProxyAgent1, it has the Proxy field set to
Yes. Such a Proxy Rule targets at outgoing connections to any port number
(1 through 65535 inclusive) with IP address 10.2.3.4 (the IP address for Resource R in the top diagram).
Note the Server IP, 192.168.1.3, is the Virtual IP address of Client B.
When this rule is deployed on Client A (or any other VPN client except for Client B), whenever Client A
tries to make a connection to Resource R at 10.2.3.4, the connection request is forwarded to
Client B. Upon receiving such a request, Client B makes the connection to Resource R on behalf of Client
A and forwards the result from Resource R back to Client A. The end result is Client A will be able to
access Resource R, just like Client B can.
One may ask the question "what happens to Client B then?" or "what's the difference between a Proxy Agent and
a normal VPN client?" When a Proxy Agent is connected to a K-Secure VPN Server, it is still regulated by all
the rules just like a normal VPN Client, except that all proxy rules concerning the Proxy Agent itself
will be ignored. As a result, when Client B connects to Resource R in our example, the connection will
not go through the K-Secure VPN Server. Instead, it remains to be a direct connection between
Client B and Resource R.
To summarize, a Proxy Rule differs from a normal rule in these regards:
-
The Proxy field is set to Yes;
-
The Server IP in a Proxy Rule is interpreted as the Virtual IP
of the Proxy Agent;
-
The Server Port in a Proxy Rule is meaningless and ignored by the VPN system;
See Also
K-Secure VPN Client
