SafeSquid Personal 3.4.6.5

Overview

SafeSquid is an HTTP/1.1 proxy server software designed for personal or professional use. It can filter web content, setup the gateway level content security, cache content, set user limits and give you many other powers over your network. It has a web-based interface that enables you to use it just like any network-layer firewall.

Installation

The installation is a bit time consuming and difficult. First run the Setup file, and the instructions in each step will guide you through the installation process. In one of the steps you can see some general information regarding the program and its configuration, and right afterwards you will be asked to pick between Trial and Full version. In another step you get to choose the directory where you want SafeSquid to store logs, the size limit of those logs and what should be done in case it’s exceeded. Other settings during setup include defining the IP and Port SafeSquid should listen on, picking a Hostname, entering the time interval at which the master server should be queried to request the updates in configurations (“Sync Time”), choosing the Master server itself (its IP and Port), changing the time that an unused thread is kept alive (ThreadTimeout parameter), changing the maximum stacksize of any of the threads, setting the number of maximum concurrent requests, the Overload factor, Socket timeout, tuning the Socket Buffers, changing the cache size for passwords and the time after which it expires, renaming each one of the four logs available (Native, Access, Extended and Performance log) and choosing the Loglevels you want to set.

Any of those settings can be changed afterwards by running SafeSquid Service Manager. For detailed information about them visit the SafeSquid Wiki.

Interface

After having finished with the setup, it’s time to launch the program. Open your web browser, configure it to use the proxy’s IP and port you defined earlier, and then in the URL bar type http://safesquid.cfg. The program’s main screen will appear, which has several different categories: Active Connections, Statistics, DNS cache, Show headers, View cache entries, Connection pool, Prefetch queue, URL blacklist, Config, View log entries, Save settings, Load settings, Show LDAP Groups, Encrypt Password, Test cProfiles and About. Clicking on any of those links will get you to the appropriate page.

Pros

The web interface is quite easy to navigate through.

It has a wide variety of content filtering and user access/restriction features, such as user authentication, temporary access with a time restriction, dynamic keyword blocking, binding users with IPs, and others. You can also block specific content such as music, web applications that require ActiveX or Javascript etc. as well as block whole websites depending on their content. Users, depending on their priority, may have increased (or decreased) speed.

By entering a password, which is then encrypted using the activation key, your configuration files are safe from being edited by users other than you.

Integration with ICAP-based antivirus software like ClamAV is supported in order to protect you and your clients from malicious software.

Cons

The setup procedure can be very frustrating to inexperienced users, but fortunately there exist explanations about everything both in the program and the product’s website.

Alternatives

A few alternatives to SafeSquid are CC Proxy Server (paid), WinGate Proxy Server (paid) and UserGate Proxy & Firewall (paid). However, those do not actually offer all of SafeSquid’s features and services, but rather a limited amount of basic functions such as internet sharing via proxy and antivirus monitoring.

Conclusion

SafeSquid is the most complete proxy server software you can go with, since its features cover all of your needs, and not only. It’s a highly recommended program for businesses and organizations.