Technical note:    10011
  Created:           05/11/95 by Topher
  Last modified:     07/10/95 by Brian
  Product:           Netscape Navigator

When you try to connect from the Netscape Navigator to a specific host
and you have set a proxy in the "Proxies" section of the Netscape
Preferences for the kind of connection you´re making, the Navigator
then uses the information you put into the "No Proxy On" field of the
"Proxies" section to decide whether or not to go through the proxy
server for your connection.  This is to let you go through the proxy
server to connect to web sites outside your domain but ignore the
proxy server for web sites inside your domain, for example.

You can put multiple entries in the "No Proxy On" field, separated by
spaces.  When you try to make a remote connection, the Navigator will
take the name of the site you´re going to and try to match it to each
entry in that field.  If there is at least one match, the proxy server
won´t be used for this connection.  (It matches from the end: for
example, if you put "netscape.com" in that field, then any connection
attempts to "anything.netscape.com" will ignore the proxy and go
straight through.  If you put "com" in that field, then connections to
"whatever.anything.com" will always go straight through.)

Here´s a common gotcha:

Say you're on the computer "aaa.foo.com", and you want to connect to
"http://bbb.foo.com/".  You probably don´t want to use your firewall
proxy for local sites, so you would put "foo.com" into the "No Proxy
On" field.  This would work fine, and your access to bbb.foo.com would
ignore the proxy server, as it should.

But since you´re in the same domain as the place you want to get to,
let´s say you just specify your destination as "http://bbb/".  Now
"bbb" does NOT match "foo.com", so the proxy server WOULD be used to
resolve the address, and this might notwork on your network [sic].

Therefore if you frequently go to some local sites by their first
names, you should put them into the "No Proxy On" field as well.

Another point to note is that you can't use wildcards in the "No Proxy
On" field.  Don't use "*.foo.com"; just use "foo.com" (or ".foo.com")
instead.  And there is no way to specify "foo.*" or "foo.*.com".