in the plugin configuration there is a tab advanced where you can fill in proxy configuration, allowing hudson to go through authenticating proxies for updating plugins. The 'problem' is here that it also uses these proxy settings for the auto installer feature of Ant and Maven installations. We have an auto installer configured for both whereby a custom zip is placed on an internal HTTP server and we use the 'Extract .zip/.tar.gz' type of auto installer. Because the http server is internal we cannot go through the proxy to access it. Maybe that is a network restriction on our side, but it is a fact i cannot change.

Maybe the proxy configuration should get a more prominent place in the configuration so that it becomes apparent that it is being used in several places, and not hidden away in the plugin advanced config page.

There are ofcourse cases where you want the auto installer to use the proxy settings (e.g. for 'Install from Apache'), so I was thinking that maybe a checkbox in the auto installer is in order to specify if you want to use the proxy settings ?