Setting up WPAD Autoconfigure for the Squid Package

AZTCO-FW software can be configured to serve up automatic proxy configuration data to clients to point users to squid running either on the AZTCO-FW system or another local system, assuming their systems settings are configured for this behavior. Though the data can be served from the firewall, the task is better suited for another local web server if one is available.

Note: To use the web server on the firewall to serve this data, the GUI must run in HTTP mode, or the vhosts package may be used to setup an alternate HTTP server on port 80. Neither of these are recommended as much as running a separate local web server for this task.

This process is known as WPAD, short for Web Proxy AutoDiscovery Protocol. If a web browser is configured for autodiscovery, it will try a few methods to figure out a proxy’s location.

A WPAD host may be supplied via DHCP numbered option 252 (string value containing the entire URL to the WPAD file) or DNS, which is easy to do with the built-in DNS forwarder.