Re: [squid-users] question on capabilities of squid

On Thursday 03 July 2003 05.19, glen hyland wrote:
> My company has a client that is insterested in a proxy
> server, and has us a few questions. But I am a bit
> confused on a definitive answer.
>
> The questions are:
> Does it track the hours that users are on the
> internet?
> Does it track the sites that users go to?
> Does it create a log at the end of that month so that
> they can see all of this information?

Yes on all above, indirectly via the log file and statistics programs
which collects and summarises this information from the access log.

> Does it block Instant messenger applications?

Yes, if you set up access controls denying these applications and the
applications use HTTP.

Applications not using HTTP is not seen by Squid and can not be
blocked by Squid.

> But as far as logging hours? I dont see it in the
> access.log when I look at mine. I can see what user
> tried to get to what site. But is there a way to track
> hours??

Each request has a timestamp when the request was made and the
duration of the request. By analysing the distribution of the
requests you can approximate the hours spent on the Internet with a
quite good accuracy. Several log analysis programs can do this for
you.

Regards
Henrik

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