What Is Gopher Proxy?

GopherProxy.org is a website that allows any web browser to view Gopher-protocol documents and use Veronica-2 (a search engine for Gopher pages) by using a dedicated server to translate Gopher-based content into HTTP-based content. Because Gopher Proxy (an HTTP website) acts as a parent directory for the Gopher pages it translates, you can effectively bookmark and navigate Gopher pages within your native browser just as you would an HTTP or FTP page.

Technical Background

The TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite is the foundation on which the Internet and its local area networks (LANs) are built. In TCP/IP model, each piece of data transmitted across the networks has four layers: link, Internet, transport and application. "Gopher" refers to a particular protocol written in 1991 for the "Application" layer. Today, however, the vast majority of the Internet consists of the World Wide Web: a system of interlinked documents whose application layers use the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). While a handful of browsers (e.g. Firefox 1.5 and above, Lynx, Camino, OmniWeb) have the ability to read Gopher documents, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari are completely cut off from Gopherspace. By translating pages written in the Gopher application protocol to HTTP, GopherProxy circumvents these compatibility issues without affecting the browsers themselves. thus, you can navigate through Gopher documents with any web browser and experience no change in functionality.

Development

Gopher Proxy was developed by Stephen Morley of the United Kingdom in 2009.
Gopher Proxy went live (i.e. first began answering requests) on October 10, 2009, fielding a total of 288 by the end of the day. As of March 19, 2010, Gopher Proxy has fielded a total of 246,128 requests for Gopher documents.

Mechanism

To facilitate direct viewing on Gopher documents in HTTP browsers, the Gopher Proxy sends URL requests to the Gopher Proxy server, which features a 2.1 GHz quad-core Opteron processor, 4 GB of RAM and a RAID 6 organization. The Gopher Proxy server retrieves the document, translates its application protocol from Gopher to HTTP and then sends the translated packets of HTTP to the web browser.

How To Use Gopher Proxy

To use Gopher Proxy, the user must navigate to "http://gopherproxy.org/" with his web browser. Once at this HTTP site, the user can either enter the URL for the Gopher document directly into the text field labeled "gopher://" at the top of the page or type a search query into the text field with the magnifying glass icon. Depending on site traffic, the translated Gopher documents will appear in the main window of the browser.

Bookmarking Gopher Pages

The URL's for all of the Gopher pages viewed through Gopher Proxy have the same parent directory, namely http://gopherproxy.org/. For example, if viewing a page whose Gopher address was "gopher://port70.net:70," the address in theweb browser would be "http://gopherproxy.org/port70.net:70." To bookmark this Gopher document in Internet Explorer or Safari, use "http://gopherproxy.org/port70.net:70" as the URL. When clicking on this bookmark in the future, the browser would automatically enter the Gopher URL request to Gopher Proxy, which would instantly return the translated HTTP version.

References

• GopherProxy.org: "Development"
• Floodgap.com: "Public Gopher Proxies"
• TCPIPguide.com: "TCP/IP Protocols"