Network

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Browser identification

When a Web browser connects to a Web site, it tells the Web site which browser it is. Some Web sites provide content tailored for particular browsers. Because browsers are in constant development, assumptions made by page designers may not have the intended effect.

If you have problems using a site, press F12 to change browser identification, then press F5 to reload the page.

Proxy servers

A proxy server is a computer that can:

  1. Store local copies of Web pages so that a group of people (e.g. employees or subscribers) can get quick access to often-visited Web pages
  2. Act as interpreter between your browser and a special service
  3. Alter or monitor information exchange
  4. Speed up Internet communication

Click and enter the necessary information. All traffic over the respective protocol will now go through the proxy server you specify.

To use a proxy, you need to specify:

  1. A protocol (e.g. HTTP)
  2. An Internet address (e.g. proxy.example.org or 192.0.34.166)
  3. A port number (e.g. 5000)

You can get this information from:

  1. Your Internet service provider (ISP)
  2. The organization that hosts the proxy server you wish to use
  3. Documentation that comes with your proxy software

To access certain sites without going through the proxy, enter Web addresses to exclude.

If your Internet provider requires automatic proxy, please enter the Web address you have been provided.

Learn more about proxies

Server name completion

When you enter a single word (e.g. "opera") in Opera's address field, Opera will:

  1. Look for a bookmark nicknamed "opera"
  2. Look for a computer in your local network called "opera"
  3. Add prefixes (e.g. "www") and suffixes (e.g. "com") and look up "www.opera.com"

Tip: You can enter comma-separated lists of prefixes and suffixes.

Note: It takes time to try multiple combinations, so turn this feature off for faster browsing.

Performance

DNS (Domain Name System) is used to translate a Web address (e.g. www.opera.com) into an IP number (e.g. 207.69.194.213).

Turn synchronous DNS on if:

  1. Your DNS server can only look up one IP number at a time (ask your service provider)
  2. You are using Windows 95 with the Winsock 2 upgrade

Try changing the numerical settings if you have a slow computer or have problems with your Internet connection, but be sure you know what you are doing.

International Web addresses

Some servers may prefer that Opera encodes the address in local character encoding (like latin-1) instead of recommended UTF-8 encoding.

You enter http://www.example.org/æøå.html
Address in latin-1 http://www.example.org/%E6%F8%E5.html
Address in UTF-8 http://www.example.org/%C3%A6%C3%B8%C3%A5.html

Server errors

Rather than displaying server errors as Web pages, Opera can make sense of them and display them in a dialog box, translated into your own language.

FTP

When you access an FTP service with a user name and a path, you can decide how the path is interpreted:

You enter ftp://rob@ftp.example.org/music/c64/
Path relative to user's home directory /home/rob/music/c64
Absolute path on root directory /music/c64

Note: Logging in as "anonymous" will always log into the root directory.

Tip: Enter ftp://rob@ftp.example.org// (double slash) to force log-in to the root directory.

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