Part of the Internet technologies glossary:

Socks (or "SOCKS") is a protocol that a proxy server can use to accept requests from client users in a company's network so that it can forward them across the Internet. Socks uses sockets to represent and keep track of individual connections. The client side of Socks is built into certain Web browsers and the server side can be added to a proxy server.

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A socks server handles requests from clients inside a company's firewall and either allows or rejects connection requests, based on the requested Internet destination or user identification. Once a connection and a subsequent "bind" request have been set up, the flow of information exchange follows the usual protocol (for example, the Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol protocol).

This was last updated in April 2005
Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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