where to configure proxy settings

[robert api]

hi there,

i'm currently trying to setup a automated update deliverysystem for a little program we develop.
in order to do that efficiently i was tasked to evaluate possible solutions and landed at puppets doorstep.

i wrote a small manifest that should do the trick (and it mostly does) and know its time to go through a couple of setup scenarios different customers may run.

one of them includes the usage of proxyservers, so i looked up the reference guide for the puppet.conf file and was happy to find the options "http_proxy_host/port"
i thought sweet, just specify the ip / port in the puppet.conf on the client that uses a proxy (c:\programdata\puppetlabs\puppet\etc) and off we go.

i my little test setup i run a freeware proxy and setup my gateway of the puppet client to that proxy, in troubleshooting why it doesnt work, i found that i shouldnt specify the ip rather than the fqdn of the proxy.
i did that, the client was talking to the server (i guess?) but i runs into an error, that says it didnt find any node definition for my client.

if i remove the proxy settings/setup the manifest runs smooth.

my initial thoughts would be 2 things i would like advice on:

maybe the puppet.conf on the client isnt the right place to try and specify the proxy settings? after a couple of google searches i found hits where people adviced to defining those settings environment variable with export? and since i'm just starting to puppet, i didnt really found that comment to be particulary helpful for me.

the second part may be to nameresolution? i dont run a dns server or domain server, just the puppet master in a debian vm and 2 win 7 vms (1 client / the other as the proxy server).
since i dont run a domain, i added a dns suffix for the proxy vm and tryed addressing it with "proxyserver.local" in the puppet.conf but that technicaly doesnt qualify as fdqn (right?) and for caution i added the proxy to the hosts file of the puppet client.

any pointers to get that going? i have no idea what else i can try.

any help would be much appreciated
greetings

robert