Normally, the Your Freedom client connects directly or via a proxy to a Your Freedom server. It is not very difficult to block this connection because all admins need to do is maintain lists of IP addresses and/or URLs of our servers, and in fact, some manage to even keep them current. We could fight this (and we do) by acquiring new servers and IP addresses every now and then, but still it's a cat and mouse game -- and the cat is getting more hungry every day, figuratively.
But now the mouse has learned a new trick. We have developed a connection mode (the "CGI" method in the client) that is so much standards compliant and so well-behaved that it is possible to have a simple but effective PHP script in-between that relays the connection from the client to one of our servers. The funny thing about this is that the mice have reproduced a lot by this -- there can be thousands of URLs per real server, and all of them use different IPs and different URIs. But: we need your help. If you have a web server on the Internet and can spare some bandwidth, please consider installing our relay script and register it on this page so others can find and use it. You are helping people in restrictive places to unrestricted Internet access, and if altruism isn't your kick, well, there's also our incentive scheme! For each session created we credit your account with bonus points that you can trade for vouchers once you've collected enough of them.
There are drawbacks for this connection method, of course. First of all it's less interactive and probably not very well suited for online gaming and the like. It also does not provide the same bandwidth as a "normal" connection. But then again it's a hell of a lot better than not getting connected at all!
Not at all. Basically that's the beauty of it: there is no simple way to obtain a list of CGI relays, and it is therefore difficult to maintain black lists for them. But the Your Freedom client knows how to find them (it's no secret that it uses search engines) -- there is a button in the connection panel of the configuration window, just click on it and the client will do its magic for you. It will try more than one option if there are several, and choose the one that performs best for you.
To configure a CGI relay manually, choose the "CGI" connection method (normally port 80 will be appropriate), then type in something like "www.someserver.com/some/url/script.php" as the server's name.
Your server needs to be able to run PHP scripts. Most web servers can do this. All you need to do is to download this script and put it somewhere on your web server, using a made-up name. Use something unconspicuous. Make sure it ends in ".php" or whatever your web server needs to treat it as a PHP script. If you look at the first few lines of the script, there are a few things you can configure there. Most important is to choose a Your Freedom server as the next hop that is topologically close to your server -- and it's best if you choose a server that has no protocol restrictions. Good choices are ems02, ems04, ems05, ems11 if your server is somewhere in Europe; if it's somewhere in America use ems01, ems13, ems16, ems20.
Now try your CGI relay with the Your Freedom client, using the syntax as described above. If it works, submit the details in the form below (only visible if you are logged in), and that's it! If you have earned bonus points you'll see it on the Incentives Statement page (note however that it may take up to one day for bonus points to appear there).
To remove your server again, simply delete the script or change its name. You don't need to unregister it, we test all submitted relays regularly and remove them when they are down for a while.
It helps if you put a link to your CGI relay script somewhere on your web site so that search engine crawlers find it, but we'll send them there anyway. It can take a week or two until your server has been indexed, don't be impatient if the client does not find it immediately.
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