Intercepting traffic with IPFW

Outline

Squid Configuration

First, compile and install Squid. It requires the following options:

./configure --enable-ipfw-transparent

You will need to configure squid to know the IP is being intercepted like so:

http_port 3129 transparent

• In Squid 3.1+ the transparent option has been split. Use 'intercept to catch IPFW packets.

http_port 3129 intercept

rc.firewall.local Configuration

# Interface where client requests are coming from
IFACE=eth0

# The IP Squid is listening on for requests. localhost is safest.
SQUIDIP=127.0.0.1

# Path to ipfw command
IPFW=/sbin/ipfw

${IPFW} -f flush
${IPFW} add 60000 permit ip from any to any
${IPFW} add 100 fwd ${SQUIDIP},3129 tcp from any to any 80 recv ${IFACE}

Testing

To test if it worked, use the nc utility. Stop squid and from the command line as root type in:

nc -l 3129

Then restart squid and try to navigate to a page.

You should now see an output like this:

<root:freebsd> [/root]
> nc -l 3129
GET /mail/?ui=pb HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; GNotify 1.0.25.0)
Host: mail.google.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
...

From there on out, just set your browsers up normally with no proxy server, and you should see the cache fill up and your browsing speed up.

Troubleshooting

On MacOS X 10.6 traffic does not show up in Squid

by Jeffrey j Donovan

You need to edit:

sysctl -w net.inet.ip.scopedroute=0

Previous MacOS X set this to 0 by default. On MacOS X 10.6 it now defaults to 1. Disable this and Squid gets the traffic.

CategoryConfigExample