Squid, the Caching Proxy
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Lately, being connected to the Internet with sky-high values of bandwidth has pretty much become the norm. Surely, the time of dial-up with 56k modems have passed; our website requests load almost instantaneously, but there is always room for improvement. Squid is a cross-platform, open source, feature-laden caching proxy. We will cover it briefly in this article.
Actually, Squid isn't a new project that appeared recently. Its development process traces back to the late 90s and early 2000s. Currently, it has become one of the most mature open source software projects due to its active history, and even though it is used by thousands (especially companies, among others), it goes unnoticed in smaller segments (such as small businesses, organizations, home use, etc.).
Squid is heavily documented and there are various authoritative user guides and manuals translated into numerous languages. Moreover, the creator of Squid, Duane Wessels, has also written a book that features Squid from cover-to-cover. It's called Squid: The Definitive Guide, and it is published by O'Reilly and Associates; grab it here.
In this article we are going to discuss a little bit of theory at first. We'll introduce and explain what web caching means in the real world, how a web proxy acts, and ultimately how Squid has become a "caching proxy," meaning a combination of both of these fantastic functions. Once we have learned the basic terminology, we will move further.
We are going to give a sense of what Squid is able to do once it is implemented in a network, look over its major set of functions, and then sum up everything, listing a few of reasons why and when (and if) you should deploy and incorporate Squid into your network infrastructure. Should the reasons be sufficient, and if you think it's going to be a worthwhile investment of time and effort, then you will know where to begin.
This article will neither feature advanced Squid configuration, nor fill your mind with plenty of tricks on how to make it work even more efficiently, and so forth. Those might become independent articles in the future. But for now, our one and only focus is on presenting Squid and making you familiar with its features.
Let's begin.
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