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I am conducting a small experiment on my office network. I have setup a proxy server on my desktop machine (connected to my LAN) and I have volunteers access the internet via my proxy server. Everything is working well. The problem is people cannot connect to the proxy server through their laptops. I asked my network admin and he said the wireless network has a firewall which prevents users from connecting to my proxy. He said I could tunnel the traffic or use SSH though. I am afraid I do not understand fully what is going on. Is there a way by which users connected on the wireless network can connect to my desktop?
I am using FreeProxy on Windows as my proxy server: http://www.handcraftedsoftware.org/index.php?page=download FreeProxy allows me to create a SOCKS 4/4a/5 proxy. Is that what I need? Part of the experiment involves logging the URL requests of the users. I am doing a measurement study. So, any solution must allow me to log the URL requests of users. Also, what changes do I need to make in the browser configuration.
2Heh. Sneaky approach. – Paul – 2011-11-16T23:55:44.460
@Paul: Actually, it's not uncommon for people to use non-standard port numbers for specific services like proxying. The fact that the network administrator implied that TCP port 22 is open by indicating that SSH could be used for the proxy, so I read that as approval of implicit permission to use TCP port 22 for proxying. You're right about it being "sneaky" (+1 for you) in the more typical situation where permission isn't granted. =D – Randolf Richardson – 2011-11-17T00:03:43.057
1Oh for sure, I meant a sneaky approach to solving the problem rather than going through an ssh tunnelling explanation, which is what I was about to take a deep breath and try to do. – Paul – 2011-11-17T00:12:19.827
@Paul: Oh, sorry, I missed that (that's wonderful, thank you!). Of course, one of the downsides to using such a well-known TCP port such as 22 is the ridiculously high number of viruses, bots, and spammers searching for open SSH ports to hack and exploit (one really good alternative that I strongly recommend is to limit which IPs can make connections and just completely ignore all other attempts to connect, but this isn't always practical if the user doesn't have a static IP).
– Randolf Richardson – 2011-11-17T00:20:47.890@Paul: Can you take a deep breath and try and explain to me what is going on? I really want to learn more about this. If nothing else, can you please provide me links to articles/blogs/books which I can read to understand this. – Bruce – 2011-11-17T00:51:27.470
1@Randolf: Thanks a lot. It worked like a charm! – Bruce – 2011-11-17T00:51:46.330
@Bruce: You're welcome. If you used SSH to do the proxying, then you'd need an SSH client (that your web browser would connect to locally) and an SSH server (which the SSH client would connect to) to accomplish this. By just using the SSH port for proxy service you've simply eliminated the need to additionally use an extra SSH client and server. (The SSH solution would work very well also, but would also be more complicated to set up.) – Randolf Richardson – 2011-11-17T00:54:56.967
1@Randolf: That is great because I wanted to make minimal changes in my participant's terminals. This is a very elegant solution. – Bruce – 2011-11-17T00:59:46.053