How To Install and Configure Squid as Transparent Proxy Server under Linux and FreeBSD

Squid is a proxy server and web cache daemon. It has a wide variety of uses: caching web, filtering traffic, caching DNS and other computer network lookups for a group of people sharing network resources.

Squid is primarily designed to run on Unix-like systems but it also runs on Windows-based systems. In this tutorial I'll show you how to install and configure squid proxy server to run under Linux and FreeBSD.

A proxy server software is based on the TCP/IP protocol. It monitors a special port such as 3128 or 8080. A computer who runs a proxy server software is called a proxy server. If other computer want to connect to Internet through the proxy server, it should know the proxy server's IP address and proxy port.