Thank you again @bonnietwin for the fast response with this one! You were totally right.
I never suspected the proxy was down because HTTPS traffic was unaffected! This has made me wonder how much the proxy does, especially as IPFire is NATing internal traffic (hiding which internal IP is making an external web connection).
I was just reading this thread and was surprised to learn that the proxy only carries HTTP connnections, when configured as a transparent proxy. I guess it makes sense as trying to transparently proxy a HTTPS connection would result in a MITM issue with certificates I think!
This would explain why I’ve found the URL Filter to be often ineffective.
So please correct me if I am wrong but the Proxy in IPFire adds the features of:
- Proxying and caching of unencrypted (HTTP) traffic
- URL Filter
- Time Restrictions
- Transfer Limits/Download Throttling
- Anomaly Detections
So for me, if not for the URL Filter and Anomaly Detections, I don’t see why I’d need a Proxy in 2024.
I’m going to consider blocking all HTTP/HTTPS traffic and manually configuring the Proxy on my devices.