Hello there, I have a spare PC laying around and am presently taking a course in the area of IT, to which we are working on DNs/AD, etc and would like to use this PC as a server. At the time of this writing, my server is installed with Windows Server 2003 Standard SP2 as well as ISA Server 2004. It took me a good 5 hours of configuring to manage to get this server worknig with the proxy correctly, however now I am using my home router (WRT54G) as a switch without any of it's router functionaily working. I would like to setup the Internet through a proxy (to provide web cache) as well as provide content filtering (to protect my users from "bad sites") Please advise of how about to do this becasue I have Googled over and over, not finding any answers in regards to setup a good, secure content/proxied network at home. No one seems to be able to provide any resolution so I come to you, my fellow net admins hoping to find answers. With love Thank you in advance Darin Darin Luckie

Things like squid or untangle come to mind. Really almost all distro's of linux and bsd have the means to do what you want. Many are already virtual machines at Vmware's site. Few are live cd's and plenty of install gateways, firewalls and security device type of configs. Windows and other large OS providers also have applications to do it all. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

Thank you for your response, though I knew all of that information. I am just looking for which program/OS to use for my configuration for I am well aware the means is out there, but there are very few articles in order to provide help in setting up a configuration such as my own. I need help and support in configuring everything and how to go about getting whatever is necessary to accomplish what is needed, as stated above. Please help Darin Luckie

Unfortunately there isn't enough information about how you want to achieve this. Why aren't you using proxy in ISA? Why aren't you using the router for net access? What do you plan to use? J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m

I have used the proxy in ISA, though for some reason as soon as I connect my Modem to the router, configure DHCP from the server and then point DNS to the local Server, this caused me to have a DNS conflict and the proxy will block all requests made out to the Internet, though I have enabled a DNS forwarder to my DNS servers (using OpenDNS) and when I therefore try and connect to a server using ping or nslookup, I do not receive the required results, only getting errors. Therefore, given all of this, I am left to believe that the proxy on ISA is blocking ping requests as well as DNS forwarding, though I cannot seem to be able to configur this properly and I have just about ready to pull my hair out in frustration. The only method I was able to receive Internet access was by adding a second NIC to my server, connect to the Internet via PPPoE and then setup the proxy...the problem with this configuration is that this server also hosts my files and I would rather they not be exploited to the Internet Therefore, my current setup is as follows: Internet > Router > LAN Server is part of LAN, has a static IP and has DNS enabled. I removed the ISA Server in order that I may have Internet access working but need/want to restore proxy as well as the ISA firewall. Please help! If any more info is needed please just ask, I bleieve in my above post, I made it clear on what I am attempting t achieve with this given configuration. Thank you and God bless you all. Darin Luckie

Ah using OpenDNS will be a problem with proxies. You need your own DNS on the PDC/BDC (or it's own server) so that proxy will be happy. Cheers. J. j e r u v y a t y a h o o d o t c o m

OpenDNS is not the problem, I am sorry that I wasnt clear I have installed and configured my network to use local DNS on the proxy with a forwarder setup to OpenDNS and all clients point to server for DNS and resolution internally is fine, externally is another issue... Darin Luckie