Is SOCKS5 faster than HTTP?

How to create SOCKS5 proxy server?

I want to create a listening SOCKS5 proxy server, the server is active only at localhost, listening on port 80. I thought of the following way: Use openssh to forward the desired ports to a nonexistent server. I'm aware, that on the existence of a listen loop will fail. So, I'll establish two TCP connections from the originating client to the already existing but nonexistent destination server and initiate two new connections from the destination server to the client's address.

Is this a good skeleton? #!
However, an SSHD server like this isn't exits (for reasons of security).

Does Windows support SOCKS5?

SOCKS5 is a standardized protocol for negotiating the use of a proxy on an Internet connection. It is described in RFC 1928 and RFC 2965.

Windows has supported SOCKS4 (IETF standard) since Windows 2022 with version 5.0 for Windows XP SP3, with version 6.0 for Windows Vista, and with version 7.0 for Windows 8. All API functions begin with SOCKS.

SOCKS5 differs from SOCKS4 in several ways: SOCKS4 was restricted to TCP, the 4-tuple structure was defined in "standard" form, and the proxy-to-proxy functionality was not defined. SOCKS5 defines a HTTP-like "general" request (in the form of a 5-tuple). SOCKS5 may be used for both TCP or UDP connections. SOCKS5 uses error codes instead of numbers for return values. SOCKS5 requires that the hostname not be sent, and that the hostname "localhost" is never used. Python has built-in support for SOCKS (see eg the socket module's setsocks() method).

Is SOCKS5 faster than HTTP?

SOCKS5 is the protocol which is most commonly used on the Internet to establish a secure connection between a client and a server. While SOCKS5 is generally more secure than HTTP, I had a question about its performance. I have a web application which is built on ASP.NET and IIS 7.5, now this application will be used by remote clients (clients which are not on the local network). Because of this I have to use SOCKS5. But the problem is that if my application needs to contact a server on the internet, it will take too much time, because of the handshake which has to be done first.

So I have to ask, ? I have heard that SOCKS5 is faster to connect to an IP address, but internet traffic will not be faster. Does SOCKS5 also introduce a handshake phase like http? My first thought: SOCKS5 has to authenticate the connection, while HTTP has not. Therefor SOCKS5 should be faster. But I'm not a network expert, and would like to know the general opinion on this topic.

9 Answers.
Yes. SOCKS5 is much faster than HTTP and HTTP negotiation.

The way HTTP works is that the client and server exchange a request and response message. The client makes a request and tells the server what resource they want (GET, POST, etc). The server sends a response telling the client they understood the request and the next step is to go ahead and perform the operation.

This means that the overhead of getting a request and response over the network is: Server sends request. Client sends request to server. Server sends response. Client receives response from server. This is pretty slow. SOCKS5 has a concept of a "SOCKS tunnel" which means the client can ask the server for a connection to be established between their IP address and a third party IP address that the client trusts. The server sends the SOCKS tunnel to the client. The client then establishes the connection with the thirdparty IP address.