Read about a proxy variable in a .npmrc file but it does not work. Trying to avoid manually downloading all require packages and installing.
.npmrc
Have you tried command-line options instead of the .npmrc file?
I think something like npm --proxy http://proxy-server:8080/ install {package-name} worked for me.
npm --proxy http://proxy-server:8080/ install {package-name}
I've also seen the following: npm config set proxy http://proxy-server:8080/
npm config set proxy http://proxy-server:8080/