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.
What about you?