Wierd Proxy Question

[BuGaLoU]

I need some ideas from you guys!

At work we have a vendor that came in a wrote an application. Basically the box has to hit a server on our LAN as well as an internet site to function. Our network uses an ISA proxy to get outside of our network. Modifying anything on the enterprise ISA for one little application is not going to happen. Their code allows you to define a proxy server and this works to hit the internet resource. Unfortunately that then blocks out our internal server. If you disable the proxy the reverse happens. Ok, so proxy exception! Yeah, no. They did not code that into support their application.

My thoughts were to put a computer in place running some sort of proxy application to handle the http requests and route them directly to the right host. Unfortunately proxy software is not my specialty. Is this possible? Thoughts?

 

[ambientZ]

i think you want something like a transparent squid proxy. (http://www.squid-cache.org/)

 

[StarTrek4U]

Modifying anything on the enterprise ISA for one little application is not going to happen.

I bet if you need it to work badly enough it will

However it really sounds like a problem with the app. If you define a proxy that should work all well and good for internet access however it shouldn't kill access to internal resources, sounds like it's using that proxy definition for all of the traffic it sends out. Running something like ethereal on that box for a bit to capture the traffic would tell you for sure what it's trying to do and then you could tackle it that way. I don't think that you would want to put some sort of half-baked solution in that will inevitably cause you problems later.

 

[BuGaLoU]

I bet if you need it to work badly enough it will

However it really sounds like a problem with the app. If you define a proxy that should work all well and good for internet access however it shouldn't kill access to internal resources, sounds like it's using that proxy definition for all of the traffic it sends out. Running something like ethereal on that box for a bit to capture the traffic would tell you for sure what it's trying to do and then you could tackle it that way. I don't think that you would want to put some sort of half-baked solution in that will inevitably cause you problems later.

I agree, it is very poorly coded! The vendor is planning on re-coding it, but we may need a hold over solution. As of now they are looking for a quick solution so its out of my hands for the moment. It's sad to deal with a vendor and PAY them when you have to figure out all the problems!