Transparent Squid Proxy - Upstream Connection to LEA - Lincolnshire

[smarties11]

Hi All,

 

We're rolling out Guest Wi-Fi / BYOD to our 6th form in September.

 

I've set up a squid box, running as a transparent proxy. I've configured it to connect to our upstream proxy. The upstream proxy is a Netsweeper proxy on the Lincolnshire Schools Network, which I believe is also based on squid. This has been working fine for a few days. We need an intermediate proxy as the clients are running in a separate VLAN and subnet - and I need some logging ability so we can monitor usage etc.

 

This morning, when connecting via a client I am being asked for authentication details. I can see in the Squid logs that it is the upstream proxy asking for these. It seems odd that this is happening all of a sudden.

 

If I change the IP address of our proxy server, everything works as normal again. This leads me to believe that the upstream proxy has 'detected' our transparent squid proxy, and blocked it - either automatically or maybe with some manual intervention.

 

I have e-mailed the LEA to see if I can get an explanation - however, in the meantime - I was wondering if anyone else in Lincolnshire has had similar issues when running a transparent proxy with LSN's Netsweeper proxy as an upstream?

 

This is how I have configured the upstream in squid.conf

 

cache_peer schoolproxy.lsn.lincs.sch.uk parent 80 7 no-query no-digest default

 

Thanks!

[smarties11]

Got this fixed.

 

Spoke to a guy at Mouchel and it appears that their cluster of proxy servers aren't all configured identically. He's given me the direct IP of one of the proxies in the cluster that doesn't request authentication and that works fine - he's looking into it now his end.

 

Very helpful guy and great service!

 

Hope this helps someone that ends up in the same boat.

[robjcrowston]

Hi Smarties11, we are having the same issue here, any chance you could send me a PM with that IP?

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

[smarties11]

Done