2 - Proxying Clients using Group Policy or Login Script

Active Directory Group Policy or a Login Script can easily be used to apply the proxy setting to users at the domain or Organizational Unit (OU) level.

Active Directory Group Policy

Please use caution in making changes to Group Policy. If you are not comfortable with these changes or do not fully understand what these changes will do, you are advised to obtain assistance from someone comfortable with Active Directory.

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers (on the Domain Controller)

  2. Right-click on the Organizational Unit (Students below) that contains the users that will log on to the server and click Properties.

  1. Click on the Group Policy tab (below), then New, and then give the policy a name.

For example, if filtering web traffic with Enterprise Web Filter, you could name the policy "MXPath Proxy".

  1. Click Edit (above), then expand User Configuration > Windows Settings > Internet Explorer Maintenance > Connection and double-click Proxy Settings.

  2. Check Enable proxy settings and do the following:

For hosted Enterprise Web Filtering, enter web.global.mxpath.net, port 8080 for both HTTP and Secure (meaning SSL) protocols.

  1. Click OK, close the Group Policy Object Editor, close the OU Properties.

Login Script

Internet Explorer stores proxy settings in the registry. Using the login script to update client registries makes it  easy to update. Even if your users do not normally use Internet Explorer as their usual browser, you will want to configure the proxy settings because many other applications key off proxy settings in Internet Explorer.

In the example shown below, you determine the proper proxy IP and Port for users, export the settings to a .REG file, and then use REGEDIT in the login script to push the settings to the PC.

Note: If you leave the setting in the login script for several days, most of the PC's should be updated by then, and you can remove or comment out the commands.

Please use caution in making changes to the registry. If you are not comfortable with these changes or do not fully understand what these changes will do, St. Bernard advises that you obtain assistance from someone who is comfortable with the Windows registry.

  1. Create setproxy.reg (any filename can be used)

Open notepad & type in as follows:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 (or the appropriate version of regedit, if different)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] "ProxyServer"="<Your Proxy IP Address>:<Proxy Port>" "ProxyEnable"=dword:00000001

Change <Your proxy IP address> to the IP address of your HTTP Proxy, and <Proxy Port> to the port used for communication. Save the file with the name you choose.

  1. Copy setproxy.reg to login script folder.

  2. Add the following line to the login script.

Regedit /s setproxy.reg