Tutorial of How Proxies and IP's work?

I am having trouble understanding how IP addresses work and how proxies work and didn't know if anybody knows of any good reading materials or tutorials for these? I am wondering how proxies protect your IP from sites like Digg or Reddit knowing you've signed up with the same IP, or how it can fool them into thinking you're on 2 different computers.

Any help would really be appreciated, I feel foolish not being able to understand how this works

 

Hi, maybe this article will help: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-to-tech/how-to-surf-the-web-anonymously3.htm

 

Yeah I had checked out that article, it seems pretty interesting but not exatly what I need. I'm looking for some software or web app, VPN, etc that will allow me to log into a website (say Delicious) from different IPs with different accounts and bookmark articles, thus the apps will never catch on and think of banning my account.

 

You can do what you want with tor:

http://www.torproject.org/

 

It looks useful but I don't understand how it works. It doesn't look like a browser or any type of proxy software, so what is it for?

 

it is simple when you use proxy server then you only connect with that proxy server and proxy server act like a router. when you request any web page its resolve your request by itself and give answer back to you.
your computer ip proxy server ip digg.com
x.x.x.x---------> x.x.x.x-----> x.x.x.x
x.x.x.x <----x.x.x.x <------x.x.x.x