Proxy Support

Currently Net Vampire is the only download manager that allows you to use multiple proxies. Why might you need it?

The "Road Map" of the Internet is very complex. Your packets can reach their destination in many different ways, and some routes are much faster than the others. You cannot specify the route for your packets directly, but you can control it by using different proxies. There are proxies at the end points of many satellite links and at other key nodes of the network.

You don't need to change anything if the data is coming at the speed of your modem, but with very distant and slow servers switching to another proxy may dramatically improve performance.

Add all proxies you can use to the proxy list and try using them with different sites. You can select a proxy from the list for each site individually - this allows you to take into account the geographic location of the site.

Select a default proxy for each protocol. It will be used for all new sites until you change the site settings.

The Use Default Proxies for All Sites option will tell Net Vampire to ignore individual proxy settings for the sites.

Title

This is a user-friendly name of the proxy that will appear in the Proxy drop-down list.

Address and Port

You can specify either the IP address or the domain name of the proxy.

Direct connection

Use the direct connection whenever possible unless your ISP requires that you use the proxy. The only exception to this rule is when you want to use a specific route as described above.

HTTP <GET/POST>

is a standard HTTP proxy. It can also be used for FTP downloads, but many proxies of this type don't support FTP restart.

HTTP <CONNECT>

Many HTTP proxies (for example, WinGate 2.1d) support the CONNECT command. Try using this mode for FTP connections if your HTTP proxy doesn't support FTP restart, or if you are having problems with proxy caching.

FTP <USER user@host:port>
FTP <USER user@host port>
FTP <OPEN host>
FTP <SITE host>

Most of the FTP proxies support restart. Try to use an FTP proxy for FTP downloads if you are unable to connect directly. These four proxy types provide the same functionality, but implement different proxy login schemes. Ask your network administrator which login scheme to use.

Socks V4

This is the preferred way to traverse firewalls. Once you establish a connection, your commands go to the site unchanged, so you will never have to worry about restart support when using this type of proxy.

No-Cache

The caching capabilities of the proxies are of very little use when downloading files. Some older HTTP proxies can even make it impossible to restart downloading just because they have a partially received file in the cache. This setting forces the HTTP proxy to ignore its cache and pass the request directly to the site.

There are cases, however, when you may want to uncheck this option - for example, if the client-to-proxy connection is less reliable than the proxy-to-site one. Many HTTP proxies are configured to continue downloading data when the client connection is lost. After reconnection, you will be able to download the file from the proxy cache at maximum speed.

PASV Mode

This is an FTP-specific setting. Most FTP servers support both passive and active data connections. There are some, however, that allow only a certain type of connection.

Check this option if you are behind a firewall, since firewalls often allow only outgoing connections.

Authenticate

This option is available for all types of proxies. Check it and type your user name and password if your proxy requires authentication.