author: programming

How to hide ip: How to Setup Your Own Proxy with Google App Engine for Free

How to Setup Your Own Proxy with Google App Engine for Free

Posted: 04 Mar 2010 08:57 AM PST

Proxies are probably the simplest way to bypass firewalls and unblock websites. They are websites that act as intermediates between you and the site you visit. You enter the address/URL of the site you want to visit in a text box, press Submit/Go button and then the proxy asks for the site/page to the web server where the site/page is located. This way the site you visit is not able to log your real IP address, but the IP of the proxy.

But finding a good proxy is a difficult task. Most of them are slow and not reliable.

The good news comes from Digital Inspiration. They published a tutorial that shows you how to setup own free proxy server by using Google App Engine. Thus you will browse via proxy independent of your home network and without having to trust a sketchy third-party proxy. Check out the video below:

The same steps are described below:

Step 1: Go to Google App Engine and sign-in using your Google Account.

Step 2: Click the Create an Application button. If it’s your first time, Google will send a verification code via SMS to your mobile phone number. Type the code and you're all set to create apps with Google App Engine.

Step 3: Choose a sub-domain that for your proxy server. Then agree to the Google Terms and click Save. The sub-domain is also your App ID that will uniquely identify your proxy application.

Step 4. Next you have to to create and upload the proxy server application to Google App Engine. Go to python.org, download the 2.6.4 Windows Installer and install Python.

Step 5. Go to code.google.com, download the Google App Engine SDK for Python and install it.

Step 6. Download this zip file from Digital Inspiration and extract it to some folder on your desktop. The zip file contains a couple of text files (written in HTML and Python) that implements the proxy functions.

Step 7. Start the Google App Engine Launcher program from the desktop and set the right values under Edit –> Preferences.

Step 8. Click File –> Add Existing Application under the Google App Launcher program and browse to the directory that you created in Step 6. Click the Edit button and replace "YOUR_APP_ID" with the ID (sub-domain) that you set up in Step 3.