WinGate (computing)

WinGate is an integrated multi-protocol proxy server, email server and internet gateway from Qbik New Zealand Limited in Auckland. It was first released in October 1995, and began as a re-write of SocketSet, a product that had been previously released in prototype form by Adrien de Croy.

WinGate proved popular, and by the mid to late 1990s, WinGate was used in homes and small businesses that needed to share a single Internet connection between multiple networked computers. The introduction of Internet Connection Sharing in Windows 98, combined with increasing availability of cheap NAT-enabled routers, forced WinGate to evolve to provide more than just internet connection sharing features. Today, focus for WinGate is primarily access control, email server, caching, reporting, bandwidth management and content filtering.

WinGate comes in three versions, Standard, Professional and Enterprise. The Enterprise edition also provides an easily configured virtual private network system, which is also available separately as WinGate VPN. Licensing is based on the number of concurrently connected users, and a range of license sizes are available. Multiple licenses can also be aggregated.

The current version of WinGate is version 9.0.4 released in February 2017.

From WinGate 1.0 through to WinGate 4.5.3, WinGate could be used without payment in a 1 + 1 configuration (1 on the proxy computer, one on the LAN). This free version was discontinued with WinGate 5.0.

A free license was re-introduced with the release of WinGate 7.2, and enables 3 LAN users free access, with the features associated with a WinGate Standard level license. Users choose a free license option when activating the product.

In May 2016 the free license was extended to 10 users

From version 6.5 onwards, WinGate runs on Microsoft Windows from Windows 2000 (*) to Windows 10, both 32 and 64 bit. Prior versions are still available for earlier OSes back to Microsoft Windows 95.

(*) With the release of WinGate 8.0 in 2013, support for Windows 2000 was dropped. (**) With the release of WinGate 9.0 in 2016, support for Windows XP/2003 and all 32 bit Windows platforms was dropped.

At its core, WinGate provides 3 levels of Internet Access: a stateful packet-level firewall with NAT, several circuit-level proxies (SOCKS 4/4a/5, and proprietary Winsock redirector), and multiple application-level proxy servers. This provides a comprehensive access framework, and allows the maximum level of access control.