Book Image

Squid Proxy Server 3.1: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Squid Proxy Server 3.1: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Squid Proxy Server enables you to cache your web content and return it quickly on subsequent requests. System administrators often struggle with delays and too much bandwidth being used, but Squid solves these problems by handling requests locally. By deploying Squid in accelerator mode, requests are handled faster than on normal web servers making your site perform quicker than everyone else's! Squid Proxy Server 3.1 Beginner's Guide will help you to install and configure Squid so that it is optimized to enhance the performance of your network. The Squid Proxy Server reduces the amount of effort that you will have to put in, saving your time to get the most out of your network. Whether you only run one site, or are in charge of a whole network, Squid is an invaluable tool that improves performance immeasurably. Caching and performance optimization usually requires a lot of work on the developer's part, but Squid does all that for you. This book will show you how to get the most out of Squid by customizing it for your network. You will learn about the different configuration options available and the transparent and accelerated modes that enable you to focus on particular areas of your network. Applying proxy servers to large networks can be a lot of work as you have to decide where to place restrictions and who should have access, but the straightforward examples in this book will guide you through step by step so that you will have a proxy server that covers all areas of your network by the time you finish the book.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Squid Proxy Server 3.1 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

HTTP authentication


So far we have learned about various ways of controlling access to our Squid proxy server. Using IP addresses and MAC addresses to identify clients provides significant access control, but these properties can be spoofed our proxy server can still be accessed by unauthorized people. Using Squid authentication helpers, we can enforce username/password/based authentication which can guarantee a higher level of access control.

Squid authentication helpers work in a simple way by which the user agent or browser sends out an Authentication HTTP header field, containing encoded credentials filled in by the user. Squid tries to decode the Authentication header field and passes the decoded fields to the helper, which then checks the credentials against a preconfigured service. If the credentials provided were valid, the client is allowed to access our proxy server; otherwise a HTTP status 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) is sent back. This is the complete process of authenticating...