Using tinyproxy with Your Home/Small Business Network

Written: Patrick L. McGillan
Edited:  Robert James Kaes (2002-06-04)
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Being as this will be the most common usage and there were no clear
basic instructions for this scenario, I thought I would write up what
I did for my home system.

First the layout of the network.  A cable modem is connected through a
Linksys Router to a small hub.  The computers hanging off the hub and
have a clear shot to the Internet.

So, the connection from the Internet to the hub looks like this:

   Internet->Cable TV Line->Cable Modem->Linksys Router->Hub/Switch

Restricting Internet web access on some of those computers (connected
to the hub) is what using tinyproxy is all about.  Using the web
interface to the Linksys router, turn off all Internet access to those
computers that shouldn't have direct access to the Internet.  This is
done by clicking on the advanced tab and entering the IP number in the
filter range.  Now those computers have to go through a proxy, for
their access, as they have no direct access.

On one of the Linux computers which still has Internet access (I use
an old 486) load up tinyproxy.  Now have the users configure their
Internet Explorer/Netscape Navigator programs to use the proxy on the
tinyproxy computer box, along with the port number declared in the
tinyproxy configuration file.  By default, there is no blocking of web
sites with this program, so I created a file, called "filter", to
start blocking some sites.

Example "filter" file entries:

bannerads.zwire.com
ad.doubleclick.net
ads.fortunecity.com

This filter file usually goes into the same folder, as your
configuration file.  Be sure and uncomment the 'Filter' line in your
configuration file and make sure it points at your newly created
filter file.

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Copyright (c) 2002  Patrick L.  McGillan <pmcgillan@dwx.com>

This document is released under the same copyright license as
tinyproxy.  You should have found a COPYING file in the top level
directory of this distribution which contains the current license.