BOINC FAQ: Running BOINC behind a proxy server

From Unofficial BOINC Wiki

[edit] General

With the release of BOINC 5.2 a new "wizard" has been created to help walk people through the process of attaching to a BOINC Powered Project. One of the most common problems people would have while trying to attach to a project was receiving an uninformative error message when the BOINC Client Software couldn't talk to a project because of a firewall and/or proxy server.

Firewalls and proxy servers are used to protect networks. Companies use them to keep hackers out and reduce network traffic on the companies Internet connection by caching commonly referenced websites. Some companies have fancy deployment mechanisms to automatically configure proxy server settings once a computer is turned on within their network, so you might be using one and not even know it.

Depending on a company’s policy, firewalls can cut off direct connection to the Internet and require them to use a proxy server to view web pages from various Internet websites.

During the process of attaching to a project the BOINC Client Software attempts to communicate with the project by acting like a web browser and downloading a web page. If it fails to be able to download that special web page it attempts to download the homepage of both Yahoo and Google since they are known to be always online. The last check the BOINC Client Software performs is to check whether or not the computer is known to actually be connected to a network.

If connecting to the BOINC Powered Project fails, and downloading Google’s and Yahoo’s home page fails, and the computer is known to be connected to a network then the wizard brings up the proxy configuration page.

To find out what your proxy settings should be you can open up your web browser and check what is stored in it. If your proxy settings are automatically detected, then you'll need to contact your systems administrator.