Intel NUC, Linux, Pi-Hole, and NAS – Part 7: Polipo Caching Web Proxy

📅 December 28, 2019
Let’s speed up web site access with a caching proxy!

With or NUC fully functional on a LAN, we can install a forward proxy to help speed up web accesses by caching the most common accesses locally.

The next time you or somebody else accesses the same site or downloads the same file, contents will be retrieved from the web cache stored on the NUC instead of downloading it again from the Internet. This can save bandwidth and make web pages seem to load faster in some cases.

One such proxy is called Polipo, which is an HTTP/1.1 proxy. It is lightweight and intended for a small group of users on a LAN, making this perfect for our NUC project.

Other proxies include Squid and Privoxy, which can be installed instead, but this article will look at Polipo.

Let’s have fun and see how to make this work!

Intel NUC, Linux, Pi-Hole, and NAS – Part 6: DLNA Using Emby

📅 December 4, 2019
Let’s add a DLNA server!

Casual users might not be interested in the “techie” features that we have installed on the NUC, such as SSH and FTP, so let’s install a DLNA server to make the NUC function as a media server for consumer devices connected on the same network!

With DLNA, users can connect and have access to pictures, movies, and music from their devices without logging in as FTP or SSH users. These devices could be cell phones, smart TVs, game consoles, or any other DLNA client.

To achieve this, we need a DLNA server. Multiple DLNA servers are available for installation, but we will install the free (basic version) Emby server for this project because Emby is easy to use, offers multiple users for a customized collection of media files, and offers a slick GUI for administration.

Ready? Let’s begin!