Home / server / Questions / 697961
In Process
Dan
Asked: 2015-06-11 05:59:09 +0800 CST

What behaviour should I expect when a users proxy "PAC" file isn't available?

  • 772

I'm working on a site where every user is configured to point to a proxy.pac file, hosted internally.

My question is, how should we expect these clients to behave when the pac file is not contactable? Is Internet Explorer meant to timeout and allow the connection? Is there anything we can configure to improve the experience for users offsite?

My testing seems to give inconsistent results, which is why I'm reaching out for community experience.

windows

1 Answers

  1. It should timeout, and then behave as if there were no proxy set. That has been my experience in setting pac files across a wide variety of platforms.

    Caveat: IE caches proxy.pac results. This is not normally too much of an issue, but you can turn it off in the registry. In test scenarios though, where you are quickly shifting between pac and no pac, you might find it confuses your results. My advice would be to turn pac cache off, it was partly a performance tweak when javascript engines sucked, and CPUs were slower.

    See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/271361

    • 1