Controlling access to the proxy server

While Squid is running on our server, it can be accessed in several ways for example, via normal web browsing by end users or as a parent or sibling proxy server by neighboring proxy servers. Squid provides various directives to control access to different resources. Next, we'll learn about granting or revoking access to different resources.

HTTP access control

ACLs help only in identifying requests based on different rules. ACLs are of no use by themselves, they should be combined with access control directives to allow or deny access to various resources. http_access is one such directive which is used to grant access to perform HTTP transactions through Squid.

Let's have a look at the syntax of http_access:

http_access allow|deny [!]ACL_NAME

Using http_access, we can either allow or deny access to the HTTP transactions through Squid. The ACL_NAME in the code signifies the requests for which the access must be granted or revoked. If a bang (!) is prefixed...