In our network a proxy server is used to give all the clients, which are all Windows XP computers, access to the internet. Now, we want setup a Wireless LAN to allow people to connect their own mobile phones, computers, etc. to the internet. However if we simply connect a wireless access point to our network everyone has to configure the proxy server on their devices.
What can I do, that the WLAN router can act as a gateway to the internet using the proxy server?
In our network a proxy server is used to give all the clients, which
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You can NAT all the traffic destined to port 80 to a proxy machine. This is a so called forced or intercepting proxy.
For example, if you have a RouterOS router, you would simply add a rule
If you proxy other protocols apart from HTTP, you would do the same for them changing the port.
Many proxy solutions can run in intercepting mode (such that you have a machine with two network interfaces that filter all the traffic that is coming through). See this tutorial for setting it up with Squid.
Otherwise, if you already have a proxy server you can use the solution above by placing a router or a server running the routing software between the access point and your network, for example Vyatta or Mikrotik RouterOS (commercial but pretty powerful), some open-source/freeware router/firewall distribution (pfSense, Openwall, m0n0wall, …) or even a vanilla OpenBSD (with pf firewall) / Linux (with iptables) to achieve the desired effect.
Once you get the straight through routing in place it should be pretty straightforward to setup proxy NAT asnoted above.
You should consider applying this setting on the router that your access-point connects to for it may save you the trouble of setting up a new machine.