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List:       suse-linux-uk-schools
Subject:    Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Squid & Igear
From:       Phil Driscoll <phil () dialsolutions ! co ! uk>
Date:       2001-08-10 7:50:44
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On Thursday 09 August 2001 16:17, Groom, Mike wrote:
> Hello from a new correspondent.
>
> We need to use Squid with a router which accesses the LEA proxy server.
> The LEA has a proxy with an authentication process based on IGear
> software. We need to get squid to allow our (Windows) clients to receive
> Igear's requests for authentication. At the moment they are blocked by
> Squid.
>
> Does the LEA need to reconfigure Igear for us or can we make some
> changes locally to Squid to overcome the problem?
>

My local school in Leeds has a similar problem. The authority's IGear setup 
is expecting individual authentication for each child - their reasons being 
to provide age related content filtering and to be able to log abuse 
accurately. This effectively means that you can't use a proxy, and internet 
access in schools even across a 2Mb connection is ridiculously slow.

Our work-around is to log the proxy machine in as a year 11 pupil, and then 
run a bit of software which polls a URL via the authority proxy every few 
minutes in order to keep that pupil's login alive. An additional tweak is 
that you can configure the hours and days during which the polling is active 
so that you don't end up paying ISDN bills for overnight and weekend use. We 
use our own logs to monitor abuse. I've released the software (a php script) 
I wrote to do this under the GPL, and you can download it from:

www.dialsolutions.com/phil/php/lln_poller.zip

Cheers
-- 
Phil Driscoll

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