# Network preferences

The connection preferences let you fine-tune the network communication between your computer and other computers on the Internet.

The default settings work perfectly well for normal browsing. Only advanced users with special needs and technical understanding should need to modify these settings.

## Browser identification

When a Web browser connects to a Web site, it tells the Web site which browser it is. In an ideal world, all browsers would work with all sites, but that is sadly not the case. Browsers work a bit differently, and some Web sites may intentionally or unintentionally shut out some browsers as a result.

If you experience problems with a Web site, try changing the browser identification and reload the page.

## International Web addresses

When using international characters in Web page addresses, some Web servers expect to get "latin-1" characters without encoding, that is as http://www.example.com/æøå.html rather than http://www.example.com/%F6%F8%F5.html. If you have problems with international Web page addresses, try changing this setting.

## Proxy servers

A proxy server is a machine that...

1. Caches large amounts of information used by many people in a central place (for example a work place)
2. Acts as interpreter to special services

To configure a proxy, you need to specify...

1. A protocol (for example "http")
2. An Internet address (for example "proxy.example.com", or "207.69.194.213")
3. A port number (for example 5000)

You will typically get this information from...

1. Your system administrator
2. The Web site which hosts a proxy application
3. Documentation that comes with a proxy server program you install

To enable proxy over a protocol, check the corresponding box and enter the information you are provided. All traffic over the respective protocol will now go through the proxy server.

If you want to make exceptions, that is communicate around the proxy to certain Web sites, you can enter a list of Web addresses to access directly in the big box in the middle of the Proxy dialog.

If your provider has told you to use an automatic proxy, please enable this and enter the Web address you have been provided.

## Name completion

When you enter a single word (for example "opera") into the Web address field, Opera...

1. Looks for bookmarks with the nickname "opera"
2. Looks for a computer on your local network called "opera"
3. Tries to put prefixes (for example "www") and suffixes (for example "com") around the word you entered, and thus look up "www.opera.com"

You can enter a comma-separated list of both prefixes and suffixes. Note, however, that it takes time to try all these combinations. If you want fast response, and don't need to look for local computers and do prefixing/suffixing, you can turn this off. Sometimes, typing the entire address may actually be quickest.

## Performance

Changing these low-level settings is only necessary if you have a slow computer or have problems with your Internet connection.

DNS (Domain Name System) is used to translate a Web address (for example www.opera.com) into an IP number such as 207.69.194.213. If the DNS server you are using is unable to look up more than one IP number at a time, you have to use synchronous DNS.

Change the numerical settings only if you know what you are doing. Make sure that total connections are at least a couple of times as big as connections to a single server.

## Server error response handling

A Web server will sometimes return a Web page that contains error information rather than the Web page you requested.

This information can be somewhat cryptic to non-technical users, so Opera offers to display the error simplified in a dialog in your own language.

Opera also offers to appropriately distinguish between showing the error page and the dialog box. This is the recommended setting.

## FTP

When accessing an FTP address with a username and a path, for example john@ftp.example.com:games/c64, you can configure Opera to either interpret the path as...

1. Relative to the user's home directory (for example /home/john/games/c64)
2. An absolute path (for example /games/c64)

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