Using Server Manager Pages to Create Autoconfiguration Files

To create an autoconfiguration file using the Server Manager pages

Steps

1. Access the Server Manager, and select the Routing tab.

2. Click the Create / Edit Autoconfiguration File link. The page that appears lists any autoconfiguration files you have on your proxy’s system. You can click the autoconfiguration file to edit it. The remaining steps tell you how to create a new file.

3. Type an optional URI which is the path portion of a URL, that clients will use when getting the autoconfiguration file from the proxy. For example, type / to let clients access the file as the proxy’s main document (similar to an index.html file for a web server); clients would then use only the domain name when accessing the proxy for the autoconfiguration file. You can use multiple URIs and create separate autoconfiguration files for each URI.

4. Type a name for the autoconfiguration file using the .pac extension. If you have one file, you might call it simply proxy.pac (pac is short for proxy autoconfiguration). All autoconfiguration files are ASCII text files with a single JavaScript function.

5. Click OK. Another page appears. Use this page to create an autoconfiguration file. The items on the page are followed in order by the client. These are the items on the page:

   • Never Go Direct To Remote Server tells Navigator to always use your proxy. You can specify a second proxy server to use in case your proxy server is not running.

   • Go Direct To Remote Server When lets you bypass the proxy server on certain occasions. Navigator determines those occasions in the order the options are listed on the page:

     • Connecting To Non-fully Qualified Host Names tells Navigator to go to a server directly when the user specifies only the computer name. For example, if there is an internal web server called winternal.mysite.com, the user might type only http://winternal instead of the fully qualified domain name. In this case, Navigator goes directly to the web server instead of to the proxy.

     • Connecting To A Host In Domain lets you specify up to three domain names that Navigator can access directly. When specifying the domains, begin with the dot character. For example, you could type .example.com.

     • Connecting To A Resolvable Host makes Navigator go directly to the server when the client can resolve the host. This option is typically used when DNS is set to resolve only local (internal) hosts. The clients would use a proxy server when connecting to servers outside of the local network.

   The above option causes the client to consult DNS for every request. It therefore, negatively impacts the performance witnessed by the client. Because of the performance impact, you should avoid using this option.

   • Connecting To A Host In Subnet makes Navigator go directly to the server when the client accesses a server in a particular subnet. This option is useful when an organization has many subnets in a geographical area. For example, some companies might have one domain name that applies to subnets around the world, but each subnet is specific to a particular region.

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   Caution –

   The above option causes the client to consult DNS for every request. It therefore, negatively impacts the performance witnessed by the client. Because of the performance impact, you should avoid using this option.

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   • Except When Connecting To Hosts lets you specify exceptions to the rule of going directly to a server. For example, if you type.example.com as a domain to which to go directly, you could make an exception for going to home.example.com. This tells Navigator to use your proxy when going to home.example.com but go directly to any other server in the example.com domain.

     • Secondary Failover Proxy specifies a second proxy to use if your proxy server is not running.

     • Failover Direct tells Navigator to go directly to the servers if your proxy server isn’t running. If you specify a secondary failover proxy, Navigator tries the second proxy server before going directly to the server.

6. Click OK to create the autoconfiguration file. The file is stored in the directory server-root/proxy-serverid/pac. You will get a confirmation message saying the file was created correctly. Repeat the preceding steps to create as many autoconfiguration files as you need.

   Once you create your autoconfiguration file, make sure you either tell all the people using your proxy server to point to the correct autoconfiguration file or configure the copies of Navigator yourself.