Book Image

Squid Proxy Server 3.1: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Squid Proxy Server 3.1: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Squid Proxy Server enables you to cache your web content and return it quickly on subsequent requests. System administrators often struggle with delays and too much bandwidth being used, but Squid solves these problems by handling requests locally. By deploying Squid in accelerator mode, requests are handled faster than on normal web servers making your site perform quicker than everyone else's! Squid Proxy Server 3.1 Beginner's Guide will help you to install and configure Squid so that it is optimized to enhance the performance of your network. The Squid Proxy Server reduces the amount of effort that you will have to put in, saving your time to get the most out of your network. Whether you only run one site, or are in charge of a whole network, Squid is an invaluable tool that improves performance immeasurably. Caching and performance optimization usually requires a lot of work on the developer's part, but Squid does all that for you. This book will show you how to get the most out of Squid by customizing it for your network. You will learn about the different configuration options available and the transparent and accelerated modes that enable you to focus on particular areas of your network. Applying proxy servers to large networks can be a lot of work as you have to decide where to place restrictions and who should have access, but the straightforward examples in this book will guide you through step by step so that you will have a proxy server that covers all areas of your network by the time you finish the book.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Squid Proxy Server 3.1 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

URL redirectors and rewriters


URL redirectors are external helper processes that can redirect the HTTP clients to alternate URLs using HTTP redirect messages. Similarly, URL rewriters are also external helper processes that can rewrite the URLs requested by the client with another URL. When a URL is rewritten by a helper process, Squid fetches the rewritten URL transparently and sends the response to the end client as if it was the one originally requested by the client.

The URL redirectors can be used to send HTTP redirect messages like 301, 302, 303, 307, or 3xx, along with an alternate URL to the HTTP clients. When a HTTP client receives a redirect message, the client will request the new URL. So, the major difference between URL redirectors and URL rewriters is that the client is aware of a URL redirect, while rewritten URLs are fetched transparently by Squid, and the client remains unaware of a rewritten URL. Let's try to understand the workings of URL redirector and rewriter helper...