For the uninitiated, internet access in NP is spotty at best with different areas of the school having different quality of service. That coupled with the fact that the NP firewall is shit crazy about blocking incoming and outgoing traffic, it makes for a very interesting experience in getting access to certain apps.

The only known ports so far that are open are the HTTP proxy ports (8080) and ICQ (5190). For the more technically inclined, it is not a problem using port 5190 to get your internet fix by running your own servers somewhere. But for the rest of us, you can use a HTTP proxy service called your-freedom.

A plausible guide for Mac users can be found here. The setup experience is almost similar for PC users with an updated client compared to the volunteer effort on the Mac front.

To complete the holy trinity of HTTP proxying and your freedom to get your internet access, you will also have to take a look at SocksCap. Because your-freedom runs its own Socks server, applications that want to use its features have to be able to do socks proxying of their connection. This might not be available for some applications (like MapleStory for the kids).

SocksCap helps in this department by intercepting network messages and dumping it through a socks proxy server like the one your-freedom runs to give you a complete solution for proxying anything you want (like MapleStory). The guide here should suffice in its configuration.

Have fun!

Incidentally, tor is also a good alternative although its really really slow.