Managing a single upstream proxy or multiple ones

Procedure

  1. On the WEB PROXY menu, under the Upstream proxy submenu, click Manage policies.
  2. Under the Global options section, from the Default upstream proxy list, select the default proxy used when upstream proxies aren't available, not configured or not allowed by policies.
    • If you want to allow direct connections to origin servers, select the Allow direct connections option. If allowed, direct connections will be made as a final fallback if the default proxy is unavailable or not configured. If not selected, it prevents web requests from being forwarded directly to their origin servers when other permissible upstream proxies are unavailable. Note: The Allow direct connections option eliminates the last option for forwarding requests in failure scenarios. Therefore, you should only use it to implement strict conditions that all traffic go through an upstream proxy.
    • If you want to send the originating IP addresses of client requests upstream, select the Leak client IP with X-forwarded-For header option.
  3. If you want to only configure a single upstream proxy click Save, otherwise, to configure multiple proxies to load balance, click Advanced ».
  4. Under the Load balancing section, from the Load balancing method list, choose the method that you want.
    • Source IP: Based on the client’s IP address, the Smoothwall Filter selects one proxy from the set of allowed proxies and uses it if that proxy is available. For example: three requests for example.com from one device might all go via proxy A; three requests from the device next to it might all go via proxy B.
    • Username: Based on the client’s username, the Smoothwall Filter selects one proxy from the set of allowed proxies and uses it if that proxy is available. For example: three requests for example.com while logged in as Alice might all go via proxy A; three requests while logged in as Bob might go via proxy B, even if Bob has the same IP as Alice.
    • Round-robin: The Smoothwall Filter cycles through the proxies one by one. Three requests for example.com, with three proxies allowed to serve the request, would send one request via each.
  5. Under the Manage upstream proxy policy section, from the Upstream proxy list, select the proxy for which you're configuring the policy.
  6. From the Source filter list, select the source filter used to determine the upstream proxy policy to apply, based on the source IP(s), subnet(s) or IP range(s).
  7. From the Destination filter list, select the destination filter used to determine the upstream proxy policy to apply, based on the destination domain(s), IP(s) or destination URL regular expressions.
  8. Choose if you want to Allow or Deny access to upstream proxies based on network location, enter a descriptive Comment and make sure that the Enabled option is selected, otherwise, clear it and click Save.

Follow-up task

  • To add more upstream proxies, repeat the process by selecting another proxy from under the Manage upstream proxy policy section.