School internet goes through a proxy server, how do I get out?

Most of the times a complete http proxy setup will include a redirect rule in your NAT router wich will send all http and https traffic through the proxy ensuring then that you can't surf the web without proxy credentials negotiation. You can circunvent the http proxy by using socks proxys instead, being the most common a SSH túnel into a outside Server whenever you got a shell. Cheers.

Use corkscrew tool to establish a tunnel over the HTTP proxy to your router with SSH server accepting connections on 443/TCP. Next, start SOCKS proxy over SSH. Configure your browser to use SOCKS proxy you just created. Voila.

There is usually a reason to set up a proxy. Nobody does this for the pleasure of making people's life difficult, or because he or she is a communist fan -- at least in UK and many other countries. You will often find a legal case behind such service (the institution may have a requirement for a best-effort filtering of pornography involving minors for instance) A proxy can be bypassed, it is easier or more difficult depending on the setup. Before jumping into the various provided solutions I would first go to the IT person and report the issues, they may not be aware of them.

From my understanding, the ability to access the internet while bypassing the proxy would be impossible unless you had a physical connection in-front of the proxy. As for the download speeds, sounds like this would be slow during peak times, because you are sharing the link with hundreds of other users and as for the faster downloads, the proxy may very well have cached them locally, so you are not even leaving the Campus LAN to download. That is very common for these types of networks. One trick i can suggest is to use the IP address of the site instead of the Domain Name, depending on the configuration you may be able to bypass blocked sites this way. Just run a simple ping of the website and the command line should display the IP with the return echo. Goodluck.

The first question to ask is not what is possible, but what is allowed.  Is your school open to students circumventing the proxy?  Is it for convenience or is there a legal reason that they are enforcing the proxy?  Many schools have a "terms of use" around their networks and while you *could* technically circumvent their proxy, it may also be the thing to get you disciplined or expelled. I recommend doing a little more research first about what the rules are, and understand the ramifications before trying any of these tips. I know that is not the answer that you wanted, but part of what you are paying for in the school should be education for life - welcome to it.  When you get into the work world, you'll have the same situation.

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