Squid VS Emby

> But I’m working on setting up a VPN at my house to tunnel all Netflix traffic through ...

On a technical point, you might be able to get away with just using Squid for the proxy, with pretty much default settings.

http://www.squid-cache.org

I used to use that years ago (not with Netflix though) running from a data centre, using an ssh (autossh) tunnel to reach it securely.

Worked pretty well, aside from the extra latency due to the packets having to go an extra half way around the world. ;)

I recommend trying a transparent proxy like Squid. There are many analytics tools for Squid logs. Squid can generate TLS certificates on the fly to inspect secure websites but you'll have to generate and install a CA certificate and key into Squid. You'll also have to import the CA certificate on any machine accessing the internet through the Squid proxy. Squid has the added bonus of caching content to speed up web browsing and reduce data usage.

I “invented” IPFS when I though “wouldn’t it be nice if we could combine Squid-Cache with BackupPC

A couple of dedicated server-side resource caching solutions have emerged over the years: Memcached, Varnish, Squid, etc. Other solutions are less focused on web resource caching and more generic, e.g., Redis or Hazelcast.

Web caching (more techical, probably not useful) there squid-cache

Also, the fact it is distributed by HTTP allow companies (and ISPs) to cache content in Squid servers (http://www.squid-cache.org/). And this is quite a feature!

If your router is compatible with custom firmware (Tomato or DD-WRT) you can flash it and use the logging features of those platforms. Otherwise no there isn't really an "app or software" that can do this, you need a piece of hardware that sits between the LAN devices and the internet connection. That can be a full-fledged computer, if you're willing to use it as firewall or router (pfSense), DNS server (PowerDNS) or proxy server (Squid).

I used to use Plex until I found Emby. I find Emby easier to use and it does the same thing. Just putting this here as a fourth option for OP. :)

Media Server: EMBY

I use https://emby.media along with private trackers and Usenet.

You can find it here! I have both installed, but I generally keep EMBY turned off until I want to play around with it. You can have both running at once and both accessing the same folders. You can check it out for free.

Emby: Offers premium features with some behind a membership.

I went with Emby, personally. Plex, Jellyfin, etc are all good choices too! :)

For clarity: Emby is still mostly open source (the source code is right here: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby). Emby started incorporating closed source plugins that you only get with the paid version of Emby in order to try and get revenue.

I used Plex until I found Emby, which is far easier to set up and works very well with all my media.