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

Time for action – understanding interception caching


Interception caching is generally implemented by configuring a network device (router or switch) on our network perimeter to divert client requests to our Squid server. Other components that need to be configured include packet filtering software on the operating system running Squid, and finally Squid itself. First of all, let's see how the interception of requests occurs:

  1. A client requests a web page http://www.example.com/index.html.

  2. First of all, the client needs to resolve the domain name to determine the IP address, so that it can connect to the remote server. Next, the client contacts the DNS server and resolves the domain name www.example.com to 192.0.2.10.

  3. Now, the client initiates a TCP connection to 192.0.2.10 on port 80.

  4. The connection request in the previous step is intercepted by the router/switch and is directed to the Squid proxy server instead of sending it directly to a remote server.

  5. On the Squid proxy server, the packet...