Proxy servers:

A server that sits between a client application, such as a Web browser, and a
real server. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the
requests itself. If not, it forwards the request to the real server.

Proxy servers have two main purposes:

Improve Performance: Proxy servers can dramatically improve

performance for groups of users. This is because it saves the results of all
requests for a certain amount of time. Consider the case where both user
X and user Y access the World Wide Web through a proxy server. First
user X requests a certain Web page, which we'll call Page 1. Sometime
later, user Y requests the same page. Instead of forwarding the request to
the Web server where Page 1 resides, which can be a time-consuming
operation, the proxy server simply returns the Page 1 that it already
fetched for user X. Since the proxy server is often on the same network as
the user, this is a much faster operation. Real proxy servers support
hundreds or thousands of users. The major online services such as
America Online, MSN and Yahoo, for example, employ an array of proxy
servers.
 Filter Requests: Proxy servers can also be used to filter requests. For
example, a company might use a proxy server to prevent its employees
from accessing a specific set of Web sites.

Server:

A computer or device on a network that manages network resources. For

example, a file server is a computer and storage device dedicated to storing files.
Any user on the network can store files on the server. A print server is a
computer that manages one or more printers, and a network server is a computer
that manages network traffic. A database server is a computer system that
processes database queries.

Servers are often dedicated, meaning that they perform no other tasks besides
their server tasks. On multiprocessing operating systems, however, a single
computer can execute several programs at once. A server in this case could refer
to the program that is managing resources rather than the entire computer.

Virtual LAN:

Short for virtual LAN, a network of computers that behave as if they are
connected to the same wire even though they may actually be physically located
on different segments of a LAN. VLANs are configured through software rather
than hardware, which make them extremely flexible. One of the biggest
advantages of VLANs is that when a computer is physically moved to another
location, it can stay on the same VLAN without any hardware reconfiguration.

QES: What is difference between public ip and private i...???

ANSWER: Public ip are the ip that can be accessed by every one ie very user has the
access to this ip's.e.g yahoo.com google.com etc is the pubic ip's.

Private ip's are the ip that can not be accessed by every one ie they are excessively owned
by an organization only the user of that organization has the access to this ip's.

Range of private IP address are

class A 10.0.0.1 to 10.255.255.254

class B 172.16.0.1 to 172.31.255.254

class C 192.0.0.1 to 192.255.255.254

excluding ips are public ip's.