Setting up a proxy

[Kaos]

At work we have about 15-20 stations that have ethernet strung to them right now, im not much of a networker but basically I connected a series of 3 (5 port) switches and a router (for wireless testing). But our company requires us to use a proxy...id like to score some points with my supervisor and could probably figure this out on my own i just want some one to confirm my train of thought.


So basically every pc we work on has to have the proxy configured and then unconfigured when it leaves the bench.

What I wanna do is take one of our computers and hook the lan up to it, then put another ethernet card in it...then basically no more fiddling with the proxy settings it would be controlled by the house pc.

I think im pretty sure how to do it...just wanted to know if it would work that way?

 

[jmroberts70]

Well I've run quite a few free proxy platforms in the past. I personally liked Proxy+ but the problem is that it's only free for 3 concurrent connections to the internet. In addition, FTP won't work, along with a host of other Internet-related platforms. Now if all you're doing with the client workstations is getting online for websites or maybe Windows Updates stuff, that should work. Proxy+ also does a great job of caching the downloaded data so revisiting a site that hasn't changed will be pretty snappy. I've tried out other free platforms in the recent past but think I liked Proxy+ the best. If you have a software budget but it's limited, purchasing a license of Proxy+ may be the way to go.

Now on the other hand, if your office has a server license, this may be nothing but a moot point. If you're running, let's say, Server2000 or something like that with DNS services connected to the internet, you probably don't even need to make any network changes. Of course this may be why your boss doesn't want that to happen.

 

[Zlash]

Squid's pretty easy to setup, we use it at work on several servers.

 

[Yogi]

I haven't used Squid on it's own, but I have used Squid through my smoothwall firewall/proxy box (it's integrated with smoothwall).
You can set it as an invisible proxy, so that client computers don't need to have any proxy settings. You just connect them and they go through the proxy without even knowing it. That sounds like exactly what you need, unless I'm mistaken.