The StClairCollege campus has a standard desktop workstation installation of WindowsXP, which includes both IE and Mozilla 1.7.2. (No Firefox for some reason.) The campus has a HTTP/Socks proxy server, and all http traffic is configured at the browser level to be routed through it. Non-proxied port-80 traffic used to work (as of last week), but no longer does. In fact, most outgoing un-proxied traffic is killed, thus forcing people to authenticate to, and use, the proxy. This has the side effect of the proxy not shuttling along telnet or ssh traffic.
Mozilla is configured by default to download an automatic proxy configuration script. Inspection of this file revealed it to be 6 lines of javascript-esque crap designed to use direct access for lan servers, and the proxy for everything else. However, it seems that Mozilla, in it’s infinate wisdom, is downloading this script and executing the reverse dns lookups contained within on every single page request. This is either failing, or taking a very long time. Thus, browsing was sucking hard. My dialup connection was faster.
I configured Mozilla manually to use the proxy. Web access is good now. Remote shells are dead. This means I can’t check email, code on the cwdb2, lurk on irc, or any other productive things while on this fucking campus. Any ideas for tunnling through a http socks5 proxy would be welcome.