Sunday, December 9, 2007

WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service

Event Description: The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state.

WinHTTP implements the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) protocol, often referred to as autoproxy. This is the protocol that web browsers implement to automatically discover the proxy configuration without requiring an end-user to specify a proxy server manually.


WinHTTP: WinHTTP is designed for use in system services and HTTP-based client applications.

Proxy: A server which serves client requests by forwarding those requests to other servers.


This service starts up to automatically to configure web proxy server settings when a web browser or other applications needs to know the configuration of a web proxy server.

The basic rundown:

1. A browser or other application needs to know the configuration settings of a web proxy server.
2. WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service starts.
3. WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service implements the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol (WPAD) which determines the web proxy configurations.

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