Home proxy server

Question

My end goal is to have a report showing all the top level domains that were visited the previous day from all the computers at my home. The report would also be able to show which pages were visited, which local IP address went there. I'd also like to track incoming and outgoing bandwidth used.

I don't want to install an application on each computer: ideally I would have a proxy server or something that all the connections would go through. I can't have this slow down the network - it can't affect my XBox Live ping time! ;-) I also frequently VPN from home and it shouldn't interfere with this capability.

The existing computers are Windows (XP & Vista), but I have no problem installing a *nix box as a router/proxy whatever. I have spare hardware to commit to this. Recommendations? Squid? ISA Server? Something else?

Answer 1

Linux box with ntop to generate the report, attached to your modem using a hub - not a switch - so it can sniff traffic that other things attached to the hub use is a very unintrusive method of gathering stats.

Answer 2

I would use OpenDNS.com. Not only did it solve my DNS issues with my ISP's DNS Servers always going down, it also does all of the things you mentioned, without installing any software.

www.OpenDNS.com

DNS 1: 208.67.222.222

DNS 2: 208.67.220.220

I simply set my router to use the static DNS IP Addresses from OpenDNS and now all of my home's PCs pickup those DNS settings.

If you register on their site you get additional features such as choosing to block porn, adware, etc. without needing to install software.

Good Luck!

Answer 3

Some wireless routers will show you the list of domains visited during a period of time.

Answer 4

I have used Squid + Squint before. It worked fairly well for web usage monitoring.

Answer 5

I second Jason's suggestion to use OpenDNS, with an additional suggestion. You should program your home router to only allow (or redirect) DNS out to OpenDNS, to prevent enterprising teenagers from changing DNS to get around the restrictions.

Answer 6

One possible solution: a bridging firewall between the router and the switch (So it sees all traffic between LAN and internet). It doesn't have to firewall/block anything, but Shorewall and MRTG can count traffic and generate nice graphics of bandwidth utilisation.

This box also would act as a transparent proxy via squid and iptables, which collects all urls and calamari can do the statistics from the proxy logs.

Start: www.shorewall.net

BTW: Do your users know that you're spying on them? Do they like that?

Answer 7

One question regarding the OpenDNS thing: how do you think can a DNS server track all the particular URLs fetched? It can track every top-level domain fetched but not how often and not which particular URLs have been fetched from the server.

That's neither possible for a DNS server nor is it part of its job.