fmPreferences - Internet Settings

A proxy server is usually not installed on your computer; it runs on a separate computer on the network, and the network has been configured so that your computer is forced to go through the proxy server.

In order to tell your computer to go through the proxy server, you have to enter proxy settings into your Store Manager for Magento. 

You can select HTTP or FTP proxy server to work with. 

HTTP proxy server is a proxy, allowing working on the Internet with HTTP and (not always) FTP protocols. It (as well as other proxy servers) can carry out caching of information downloaded from the Internet.

You need to select which type of Proxy Server do you use, enter Proxy Server, Port, User and Password.

Note: During a HTTP connection, the IP address of the client machine is necessarily transmitted in order to get the information back. This allows a server to identify the source of the web request. Any web resource you access can gather personal information about you through your unique IP address - your ID in the Internet. 

FTP proxy is an application level gateway for FTP. It sits between a client and a server forwarding command and data streams supporting a subset of the file transfer protocol.