I would like to know how many NethServer users are making use of transparent proxy, and whether any of you are also using content filtering. I’m having trouble with my setup and thought it would be useful to see if others are using these features without trouble.
For those of you who don’t know the terminology, transparent proxy is a way to send http or port 80 traffic through Squid without having to make any configuration changes in a client’s web browser. If you only have a few users, you can set up a manual proxy and enter the proxy IP address and port number into your client’s web browser. The operating system will then redirect all port 80 traffic to the IP address and port you specify. If you have dozens of clients, this is not a practical solution. Transparent proxy takes care of the redirect within NethServer.
The proxy will cache web pages for you. This saves bandwidth and increases speed, since a page can be retrieved from the NethServer box instead of the web. The proxy can also redirect port 80 traffic once more to a content filter, such as squidguard, so that time- and bandwidth-wasting websites are blocked.
On my network, I have both green (lan) and blue (guest) networks. I have both set up to do transparent proxy for http, but not for https. I have caching turned on, and I am using the free Shalla blacklist to do web content filtering.
I am using transparent proxy and content filtering. I’ve been using the same filter (only porn selected), and settings except I have no guest network (thus manual). I also just turned on the disk cache, because I thought it was already on. LOL
I don’t have exact figures now, but I think I have more than 10 systems running squid in transparent mode, some green+red, some green+blue+red (often also red2, multiwan).
It’s an old feature, well tested.
I don’t use the https transparent proxy, but I’ve tested it thoroughly.
Thanks Jeff and Filippo. Jeff, like you I ran without the cache turned on for awhile. I don’t see much discussion here about the use of proxy, so I wanted to try to get a sense of how much use there is in the NS community. I realize it’s not a particularly sexy feature…
I disagree, think this is a good question! Is there any other member who want help @AZChas with his survey? maybe @CharlieWhiting or @mamengoni could help us with additional stats with their customers.
NethServer installed on my clients, they request the blocking of websites such as facebook, youtube, and pornos, request additional monitoring of new pages that users can enter and are outside the security policies of the company, and later block them.