Setup local non-caching proxy

This menu item is only available on ProtexLocal servers - either locally installed hardware or Virtual Appliances.

In v5 the Protex filtering engine can be configured to operate with or without a proxy server to fetch pages from the internet. Depending upon the exact specification of the Protex server one or other of these screens will be presented.

In the first case clicking on "Direct" will set the web filtering engine to fetch pages directly from the internet without using a proxy. This is the preferred option. If, however, the local network is set up so that internet access is only allowed via a Proxy (e.g. a firewall blocks all internet traffic except from a single cache/proxy server) then this can be configured by selecting the "Proxy" button and adding the IP and port of the proxy.

In the second case there is no option to go directly to the internet and a proxy will need to be set up.

In the majority of cases this is not a problem: users may already have a proxy on their own network or access to their Local Authority's filtering or caching service. Where there is access to a local or remote proxy this will usually provide the best performance. These users should never need to access this page: the proxy to be used will have been set at installation and will rarely need to be changed. If there is a change of proxy IP address or port then this page can be used to modify the setting.

In some cases when using a Virtual Appliance, however, there is no easy access to a proxy: sites using a commercial ISP, for example, will have direct access to the internet and may not have access to a specific proxy. In these cases the proxy on the Protex Virtual Machine itself can be used. This is done by setting the IP to "127.0.0.1" and the port to "8123". When these settings are used a non-caching proxy on the Virtual Machine is used by Protex to fetch web pages.

After any changes have been saved click on Protex Hard Restart to make the new setting active.