I'm in a place that has the same http proxy setup. And every browser that I know of supports proxy exclusions. lynx even supports it via the no_proxy environment variable. (I was under the impression that the http transport library handled this not Lynx itself...) Why configure a proxy to block local? - well we didn't, and clients configured to pull local pages through the proxy were overloading the disk/cpu/network on the proxy servers - not many machines can cope with with multi megabits of similtatious in/and out via their disk and not slow down.... (Fast client on a fast switched LAN talking via local proxy server also on a fast switched LAN to a fast web server on a fast switched LAN, and the proxy server stuggles to shuffle the bits in and out. Multiple that by several hundred misconfigured users...) Basicly the proxy servers were being overwhelmed with local traffic, so the changed the configuration to refused to proxy such traffic.
