URL tracking

[Matt Morgan]

On 5/25/05, Phil <plabonte at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I need to implement  URL tracking on my network. Basically the higher
> ups will want to track the web urls that all the clients are going to.
> 
> Now what is it that I can use the will sniff out all the url's on the network?
> 
> I have a hub between the internet and the internal network...

Do you have a firewall or really just a hub? Most firewalls have URL
filtering/tracking components or add-ons. If you don't have a
firewall, check out smoothwall (which can integrate nicely with squid,
for example).

> 
> could I use Ethereal to sniff out all the packets? Or is there

You could use ethereal but it would be annoying to extract the URLs
from that data. I haven't tried it, but it would be easier, I suspect,
to get IP addresses for port 80/443/etc. requests than full URL's.
Even that would be a roundabout way to do what you want.

> something that would only collect the URL's?
> 
> I do not want to modify any of the client settings?
> 
> I know i could use squid but I think I would have to use a box with 2 nics?

Squid is probably the right thing to do, and I would put it on a
firewall/router box. If you don't currently have a firewall it should
be no big deal to set one up (and of course there are other good
reasons to have one). Check out smoothwall, which would be an easy way
to get what you need.