Which Proxy Server?

paradigm

paradigm

paradigm

Caporegime
Joined
26 Aug 2003
Posts
37,508
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Hi guys, quick one on proxies?

ISA (or forefront) is totally overkill for our needs, we just need a simple active directory integrated proxy server, which we can create site blocklists and whitelists for, and to log internet access.

It would be advantageous (although not wholly necessary) for the server to have the ability to tightly restrict access during working hours, but to de-restrict during lunch.

Any ideas?
 
iaind said:
Sounds like ISA is exactly what you need.....
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Yes and no. ISA does exactly what we need, but it also does a whole lot more which we don't need nor care about (leading edge stuff and exchange integration mainly).

It would also help if "ISA Server denied the uniform resource locator" didn't seem to keep happening for no good sodding reason.

ISA has always been a picky beast, and has never been plain nor simple (or even logical) in setup.

Why oh why they had to replace MS Proxy Server with ISA I have no idea :(
 
ISA is great once it's up and running but figuring out why rules are being denied can be a complete pain. I personally would stick with ISA, but each to their own - if you're having problems and have been put off, I'm sure there are other solutions out there.
 
Do you have a budget?

WebMarshal is god awfully simple to implement and scalable. It will do everything you need in terms of blocking, access hours even quotas which imo are a far better solution in a working environment with staggered lunch hours.
 
No real budget as such, I'll just be lumping it in with the £75K+ spend that the IT department is already going ahead with. So as long as it isn't over a few grand, then it'll be fine.
 
How many users, and must be some kind if budget :)

we use bluecoat for now, as well as some other stuff like surfcontrol, it is not cheap :(

Our license is up soon and we're just looking at alternatives. Checkout an appliance by Bloxx, evaluating one now and it's pretty good and pretty cheap http://www.bloxx.com

The Cisco Ironport stuff is supposed to be ok, that's the next bit of kit to be eval'd, although it's about 3x as much as the Bloxx kit.
 
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I'd be tempted to give SmoothWall a go. You can try their express version (aimed at home & small business users) for free. You don't say how many users this will be supporting but if we're talking a fairly large number you may want to go for one of their UTM Hardware appliances. No idea on cost.

We use Bloxx at my place of work - I would never call it cheap - not sure how their pricing model works but last quote we had for their new equipment was over £15k. The box has a tendency to 'reset' itself and lose some settings ocassionally too. It's crap at blocking proxy websites too. Not sure how the new one copes (as I explained their costs are huge and we decided not to bother just yet) but supposedly it is better.
 
Bloxx for 500odd users for us was quoted at about 5k for 2x TVT-500 appliances I think , Ironport was something like 15k but i swear i heard the guy say that was for only 250 users, can't be right. Will have to find out how much the bluecoat renewal was as I can't remember

Only been trialling the bloxx for a couple of weeks and I've only had a quick play.
 
Ev0 said:
Bloxx for 500odd users for us was quoted at about 5k for 2x TVT-500 appliances I think , Ironport was something like 15k but i swear i heard the guy say that was for only 250 users, can't be right. Will have to find out how much the bluecoat renewal was as I can't remember

Only been trialling the bloxx for a couple of weeks and I've only had a quick play.
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I'd be interested to know how you get on with Bloxx if you could keep me updated...We have substantially more than 500 users - around 5500, although perhaps only 1k concurrently. I believe the quote was £17k - ish.. I'd have to double check exactly what it was for.
 
aye the place I'm at now is a tiddler :)

Our quote also includes other stuff, due to history our network is actually supported and managed by an external company.
 
It's around 200-250 users, so not massive by any stretch, but certainly not SOHO size. As I say, there isn't really a budget, the whole IT infrastructure is getting an upgrade, and as such it is just being lumped in with the costings for everthing else (current sat at around £75-80,000, and have up to around £100,000 to spend, so unless it's going to cost £20,000, there isn't a problem).
 
Chicco, do you run it on a native box or in a vm?

I'm currently configuring squidnt for a client of mine with logging etc using sarg and this sounds like a really nice all in one solution.
 
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