Anti-censorship Tools (proxyTools) 2004.12.2

ProxyTools is a package of Perl network utilities designed mainly to assist those whose Internet access is censored, unreliable, or otherwise damaged. Uncensored access is provided to any outside service required (Usenet News, Web browsing, IRC, Socks etc.). Setup requires installation of Perl and some modules; this is doable by even a novice MS Windows user with email instruction, allowing help to be provided to those inside these countries from expert users outside.

In pursuit of this rather non-specific goal, some interesting network utilities are already produced. We think the code is interesting in itself, useful in other areas, and would welcome contributions to the overall sum of ideas, concepts and ideals expressed in these tools.

The project is of interest to the following groups of people:

those who live in Internet censoring countries (or corporations, schools, universities) such as the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria), China, Burma, etc.
those who would wish to assist those in the group above.
those who are interested in Perl code dealing with many aspects of networks at the socket level, and transactions using HTTP proxies. One tool in this project offers a failover capability, and intelligent choice, between various censor-bypassing strategies and network paths, offering the user a robust, uncensored connection even in a low bandwidth, unreliable, packet filtered and proxy-poor environment.
those who administer the firewalls which do the censoring, and those who might be considering this.
those who are just curious about the current techniques used by the first group above.