[K12OSN] Autoconfiguring Proxy settings without visiting each machine or use of loginscripts

[Brian Chivers]

I've had a proxy.pac file kicking around for a while that I created 
using info I read on the censornet forum. I've been thinking about how 
to use it for a while now without reconfiguring machine. Currently I use 
a login script to force the settings but we are setting up a couple of 
open hotspots outside of our network so login scripts aren't an option 
but I need to enforce proxy settings to control access slightly. I'd 
almost forgotten about the proxy.pac file until I was looking through 
some stuff on the smoothwall.org forum. I found a link about setting up 
auto proxy config and how to completely automate it.

Have a look at this link as a start

http://www.wlug.org.nz/WPAD

The long and short of it is, create your proxy.pac file but save it as 
wpad.dat. Upload the file onto a server running something like apache 
into the root of your webserver. Add a mime type in a similar fashion to 
the .pac file but for .dat. Make sure you can access this file by 
pointing your browser at it. Now comes the bit I hadn't done or read 
about before Surprised

Create a CNAME entry in your DNS for wpad.yourdomain.com to the server 
that you uploaded the file to.

Now when you tick the auto detect proxy settings in IE or Firefox it 
should look for wpad.yourdomain.com/wpad.dat and configure the browser 
for you.

Only tried it on IE quickly but seems to work. I expect most of you have 
already seen this but I thought there might be a few people out there 
that like me hadn't :-)

Hope it helps someone

Brian

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    The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily 
                the views of Portsmouth College