[squid-users] Performance Issues

Hello,

I have some performance issues I was hoping you could help with. I have a
Sun Netra T1 with 512 MB RAM and 500 Mhz processor. The hard drive size is
40GB. I am using Apache 1.3 on port 80 and Squid 2.3 stable (off of
sunfreeware.com). I compiled postgresql 7.2.1 and am also using perl 5.6.1.
I have created a little program in perl that is used for authentication.
The authentication program is accessed via the web browser which connects
to port 80 on the apache service. When the user logs in their username and
IP are set in a postgresql database. After 10 minutes of being logged in, a
redirector (size is 667 bytes) will wait for the user to request a website.
My redirector checks the postgres database and if they are logged in passes
their requests to squidGuard to make not to let inappropriate content through.
If their IP has expired (after 10 minutes) then this redirector forces their
web browser to go back to the login site (apache 80).

As far as configuration of squid goes ... I have the redirect_children set to
5. I have pretty much left ever thing else as default.

My problem is that when 3 or more users connect to via the squid port
performance becomes extremely poor. I get message on the console that says
"Too Few Redirectors.....". I need to be able to have 200+ people connect
through squid.

Any ideas of what might be wrong? Also, for what I am doing with apache, should
I consider using the http_accelerator?

Thanks for your time.

-- 
Ryan Hairyes
Network/System Administration
Lee County School System
Phone:919.774.6226 x 1252
Voicemail:x 2361