Determine the disadvantages of SOCKS protocol

The main problem with SOCKS is that it lacks transparency to software developers and users.

Implementation requires a change to all existing client-based software so that all of them use the SOCKS libraries. This process of changing the client code is known as "socksifying". This could be extremely cumbersome since it is also expected that at both sides similar level of programming should be available since the entire process takes place at the sessions layer (i.e., at the level of routers).

SOCKS combine powerful features of circuit-level proxies without the programming overhead of traditional application-level firewalls. A number of companies, including IBM, DEC, Cyber guard, etc. have commercial firewall products deploying the SOCKS protocol.