Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
Forcing the use of your Proxy
Now that you have this proxy, you have to enforce its usage; especially if you are going to be using it for content filtering. There are many different ways you can do this, however, they all vary based on your network. For me, I configured my router’s Filter settings to not allow any IP address on my network access to Port 80 except my WHS and my Main computer. This forces any machine on the network to use the proxy for Internet access, but does not stop email activity or any application that operates on any other port. You can configure FreeProxy further for all kinds of things; like email clients, instant messengers, file sharing utilities, but that would make for a HUGE article.
Configuring Internet Explorer
From Internet Explorer (I have version 6 on this laptop so that is what you will see), expand the Tools menu and select Internet Options. When the window opens select Lan Settings towards the bottom of the screen.
- Check the box for “Use a Proxy Server for Your LAN”
- populate the field with the name of your home server (for internal use), the ip address of your home server (for internal use), or servername.homeserver.com (where servername is yours – this will allow you to access your proxy from the outside world)
- Check the box for “Bypass proxy server for local addresses”
You will now have access to your proxy from anywhere! This is useful for those of us whose companies block a bunch of site, some of which don’t even have “questionable” content.
Is there a way to set this up so that you are using an anonymous IP address? Say if you were trying to access content in another country which blocks U.S. IP addresses?
how can i hide the lan settings
Be very careful when using this software if you set it up without authentication it will broadcast itself for anonymous users to use which will utilize your bandwidth and slow down your internet connection. I have used this software many times. You can see who is logged into the proxy. If you don’t believe me keep encryption off and view the logs for who is connecting once you set it up. you will see many people connecting anonymously if Authentication is turned off. I am sure the developers of the software were very aware of what they were doing because it is very intentional and a noob using this software will not know any better. If you require authentication you will have nothing to worry about.
I have done a little research and used this FREEPROXY program it slows down your internet connection because it shares out the proxy with anonymous internet users if you do not have encryption enabled. Be very very careful when using this software it will broadcast your proxy IP out to all to use if you do not require authentication.
ya
I wanted to be able to access my WHS internet connection at my workplace. I was able to set it up successfully but it doesn’t ask me for a username or password when I access the proxy from work or wherever I am at. I used the NTLM authentication but I guess that’s for something different (?). I would like to enable a password that I must enter when I first start the browsing session from work. Is there a way to accomplish that? Thanks.
This is an issue for me as well…what is worse, it seems to allow unfettered access to the LAN side of my local network. For instance, I can access my router config page simply by connecting to the proxy. That doesn’t seem right. What happened to the authentication?
Can you tell me if a proxy server will help me here.
I have a laptop and a desktop machine. My laptop is a work machine and my desktop is mine. My laptop is part of my work domain and I can start a VPN to access resources at my work. However, my developer tools are quite CPU-intensive and run quicker on my desktop machine, so when I’m working at home I prefer to use that. The desktop isn’t part of the work domain, therefore can’t use the VPN. But I need to access a SqlServer on the company LAN. Can I set up my laptop to connect to the company VPN and act as a proxy server. Then connect my desktop to to the proxy server to be able to access the company network?
That is not the correct application for this…
When you say make the dns entries static. What do you mean?
Setting this up was a dream, altho performace is dreadful! Is there anyway to increase internet speeds I have a gigabit network and 20 mbit internet connection, But since setting this up my internet connection isnt even reaching 1 mbit!
Which version do you have installed? I would also make the DNS entries static for your ISP on your network settings in WHS. That might help the name resolution be a bit quicker, which may have a direct impact on your speeds.