There's proxy so why need gateway

[NetworkGeezer]

Some applications which download updates seem to require a gateway to be defined even though they know about the IE proxy setting in HKCU. Checking on firewall stats shows no attempt to directly access. What's going on?

[GrumbleDook]

Gateway is often the phrase that describes whatever controls your routing ... this could be your Router or your Core Switch ... it might even be you firewall / proxy.

Most important when used for supernetting or with multiple networks.

Some software just likes to do the occasional "hi" to it ... just to make sure that if anything goes wrong it knows who to ask for info.

[ajbritton]

You need a gateway so that you can route traffic to other networks. If, for whatever reason you proxy server is not on your local subnet, then traffic for it is routed via the gateway. This is not usually anything to do with stuff running at the application level however. The network layer should take care of it.