Debian and Squid questions

[Directed]

I am setting up a firewall that will block websites by keyword/IP address/web site. I originally had a piece of hardware doing it, but it wasn't quick enough. I also noticed that people in this school congregate towards similar sites, and I though I could save us some bandwidth usage as well if I had a http proxy that cached interenet info. So I am giving in and setting up a Linux box using Debian and Squid as the app that does the whole http proxy and firewall thing.

Will an old PII or PIII box with a couple of hard drives work ok? How much RAM will I need?

I work in an environment that has approximately 40 clients, 30 of which will be accessing internet simultaneously.

Any suggestions or insights would be appreciated.

[wolfpac181]

Hmmm. I just came back from a linux fest with some of this stuff going to me.

Might check with anaval and bleeding edge snort. The director of IT for the seattle municipal court lives by anaval. It gives him a readout of where people are going, what they're sending out. Could be useful for you too.

set it up by a transparent bridge or a dhcp server. that could really help. I try to stay clear of proxy servers. they seem to be a little rough around the edges for mainitaining.

[ewe2]

p2 or p3 should be fine. The bigger the drives the better, squid loves a big disc cache, but unless you want a lot of squidlets running, you don't need massive RAM. If you can, go the transparent proxy route, a bit more config but saves trouble on the client end.

[Directed]

p2 or p3 should be fine. The bigger the drives the better, squid loves a big disc cache, but unless you want a lot of squidlets running, you don't need massive RAM. If you can, go the transparent proxy route, a bit more config but saves trouble on the client end.

My config would have between 256 to 512 MB ram and 2 10 gig hard drives. Most probably with a 200 Mhz PII or a 500 Mhz PIII.

[ewe2]

yeah that should do it, whack a quick nic in there and you're laughing.

[astro]

Smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org/) has always been one of my favorites. Quick and easy to install, full web based interface, and access to config files if you want nuts and bolts.

Saves all the tedious mucking about and building it from scratch ;)

[beagle]

Smoothwall is great if you know nothing about Linux and want to run a transparent proxy - it just works. Filtering is another issue. A couple of years ago I would have said get Squidguard, but me not know anymore what is out there, thinking something better must have come along

beagle

[Directed]

Thanks guys for the suggestions, you are all great!