Web Activity Monitoring Tool

Question

I admin an OS X 10.4.11 server for a small network of about 10 Macs & 10 Windows computers.
It is running both DNS and DHCP. An Actiontec DSL router is running NAT.
The owner & management of the company wants to keep a closer eye on a couple of naughty employees, wanting to monitor their web activity. Apparently these employees are spending several hours a day on myspace and such.
When I log into the Actiontec and check the web monitoring log, almost all of it appears from the Mac server and not the individual computers.
Is there a tool, whether commercial or shareware, that will install on either a Windows computer or a Mac that can provide web activity logs by IP (given the current network setup)?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I do the same thing, and it's pretty simple to set up:
What I do is enable the web service on the OS X server. Then I enable the Proxy service. (All through Server Admin)
Then, I set that server as the proxy on the client machines. (Safari proxy is set in System preferences/Network Settings, and Firefox and Exploder in their respective Preferences. (something like Firefox/Preferences/Network Connection settings.))
Then your server's web access log will show you by IPs all the accessed web pages.
You can also block desired websites that way (it's in the proxy settings on the server -- Server Admin).
Since Safari proxy is controlled via system preferences you can lock it so that users can't change it, but firefox and exploder settings are user acessible, if your users are savvy enough to find them.
The only problem I've run with this, and it is such a minor issue, is that some websites that use nonstandard ports have trouble getting through proxy. In that case I just bypass the proxy on the browser settings. (It's in the same place where you set those settings in the first place.)
Hope that helps:)
There are liability issues involved though, with expectations of privacy and other policies, such as uniformly and randomly applying "keeping a closer eye". I wouldn't recommend firing anyone over that, as they could easily counter-sue.