Hello –
I have what I think is a proxy and/or port issue on or with our NEW Sophos Web Security Appliance –model WS500. The problem(s) are on various MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and iMacs. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and iChat work perfectly on nearly everything. But Yahoo Messenger (on all of the Macs), mail.me.com email (on one MacBook Pro) and mail.comcast.net email (on the same MacBook Pro) do not connect --although our own email server connects immediately. The mail client is MS Outlook for Mac 2011 version 14.0.2. I have used a proxy.pac file to configure the proxy settings in System Preferences/Network (Ethernet) /Advanced/Proxies. With only the proxy.pac file entered, only Outlook works and then only with our own email server --not with the other two accounts. With the proxies entered manually only the three browsers and iChat work. With BOTH the manual entry of the proxies and the Automatic Proxy Configuration in use simultaneously --then all three browsers, Outlook (our own server --not the other two), and iChat work. But nothing I have tried has allowed Yahoo Messenger, mail.me.com and mail.comcast.net to work. The Outlook error message (for mail.me.com and mail.comcast.net) is that the server could not be found --thus my assumption that it is either a proxy or a port problem. I have gone online to see what ports those things need opened and have opened about 30 various ports on the proxy server but that didn't help either. I should also mention that both Windows 7 and Windows XP versions of Yahoo Messenger work perfectly using an http proxy server setting –the Mac version of Yahoo Messenger defaults to the proxy settings in the System Preferences. I believe that the issue is with Yahoo Messenger not reading correctly the proxy setting in the System Preferences --but I am not certain of that. This is particularly a problem on a MacBook Pro running OSX 5.8 and on a MacBook Pro running OSX 6.5, but there are at least two iMacs and one MacBook that are also having problems. An interesting twist to all of this is that with one of the iMacs, almost nothing seems to work regardless of how the proxies are entered –almost nothing except that Entourage works for our emails server and Microsoft Office Updater works, nothing else –so there has to be a network and an internet connect available for those two applications to work.
The prozy.pac file I am using is copied from the article “Creating, Testing, and Deploying a proxy.pac File” which I downloaded from the Sophos web site. I have tried two versions of the file –here they are:
function FindProxyforURL (url, host) {
return "PROXY 192.168.1.3:8080;
DIRECT";
}
function FindProxyforURL (url, host) {
return "PROXY WS500.msd-co.org:8080;
DIRECT";
}
I did a bit of looking online about proxy.pac files and the samples shown online all show an “IF” statement. Could the problem be (at least, in part) that the very simple proxy.pac file Sophos recommends is not correctly read by Macintosh computers? I don’t begin to know enough to know if this applies here or not.
As I am typing this something occurs to me that I should probably ask. Since all of our web access is via the Sophos Web Security Appliance, the address of that appliance is clearly our proxy. But is the IP address of that appliance also our Gateway? Or should our Gateway remain our firewall’s (our SonicWall Network Security Appliance) IP address?
Thank you for any suggestions you might be able to offer me. (I suspect that the frustration and stress of this may be clouding my ability to see what is likely a very simple issue.)
Ed Feist, Ed.D.
Director of Technology
Montessori School of Denver
1460 South Holly Street, Denver, CO 80222
303-756-9441 ext.33 / 303-757-6145 fax
montessoridenver.org