ASP saving to sql through provider's proxy server

[rebelisle]

Hi, this is a problem that has plagued me for months, ever since I have joined this company and taken over for the person who wrote the software who moved on.

We have an online application that only employees of the company can log onto, from home or work, hosted by ourselves to view and save information about their work week, shedules, ask to work on certain days, send messages to each other, etc etc. It is a mix of ASP, Java 1.1, and is saved to SQL 7.0 Database.

The software works fine from everywhere except a certain unmentionable cable internet provider that is the largest in the country (most home users).

Installing http sniffer software I have found that the internet provider passes a script every time IE is opened that forces you to use one of their proxy server. From now on whenever you're surfing, the server you are getting the data from is alway their proxy server. That makes it so when a user from home, using this cable company, saves their data it is saved using an IP address of the provider's proxy, and not our server's IP address.

When this happens, the user's Internet Explorer is completely locked up and must ctrl-alt-del to get out of it.

I'm now looking for ways to either block that config file from the internet providor or to make sure the server that the user is saving to is always our server, not some proxy server somewhere. It isn't a problem (I think) with caching on the users computer, or caching on the proxy, but a problem of the server now actually BEING the proxy server, and not our server.

More information given upon request. Even if you know books/places to look for such things it would be gratefully recieved.

-Matt

 

[rebelisle]

Update. I have successfully blocked the configuration file sent by the cable internet provider using Zonealarm, cranking all the settings to max and opening Internet explorer.

Zone Alarm warns me that it has blocked something, then I close zone alarm completely, and can use the internet application as normal. I guess this only tells me that the proxy server that is being dynamically configed when I open IE is indeed the problem.

 

[rebelisle]

Well, after a while I figgured this one out myself. In internet explorer there is a checkbox under:
tools->internet options->connections tab->lan settings->"automatically detect settings"

It seems so innocent but this was causing all my problems. Uncheck it and ISP's can't force you to use their proxy settings.

To think of all the days I spent looking through debugging Java and ASP code on this one...