Suggestions for a Proxy Appliance

I'm looking for a painless solution for the following scenario.

16 PC's available to the general public must have internet access. I've been instructed not to filter content but that traffic should be logged. The logs must be made available in an easy to read format for non-technical management. The location currently has a soho router and an active internet connection.

I could use one of the boxes as a router or proxy but I am trying to avoid this option (I don't want to be over there isntalling updates)

Can anyone suggest a hardware appliance with detailed logging capabilities that comes in under $500? A PC can be setup as a syslog server but I would prefer to have a web interface on the appliance itself. If not what is the best alternative? IPTables,Squid,Winproxy?

Thanks in advance.

Hey Hey,

I'm going to suggest the same solution that I use at home.... It's really quite painless and it's convenient..

The hardware:
A Soekris 4501-30 (A compact motherboard + processor setup)... http://www.soekris.com/index.htm - It's soekris part number 10450131 and the final cost is $177USD for the board and the case... It's 133Mhz w/ 64MB RAM... It has 3 Ethernet Ports and a compact flash slot (it also has a 3.3V PCI slot inside)

The OS:
m0n0wall.. A FreeBSD variant that's open source. http://m0n0.ch/wall/ It looks traffic in it's web based front-end (last X results (x is customizable) but you can also offload to a syslog server)

Peace,
HT

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Originally Posted by stevel

16 PC's available to the general public must have internet access. I've been instructed not to filter content but that traffic should be logged. The logs must be made available in an easy to read format for non-technical management. The location currently has a soho router and an active internet connection.

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Take a look at ClarkConnect (www.clarkconnect.com). It's a Linux solution
with numerous features, any of which are optional. It's very easy to config
and use, very stable, and there's a free version. And you can run it on an
old piece of hardware.

Ugh, logfiles. The problem you confront in making logfiles "available in an easy
to read format" is their sheer volume. You'll need an app like Sawmill (Linux)
for analysing any logfiles and breaking them down.