Re: [squid-users] 3 questions about using squid as areverse proxy

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Culley Harrelson wrote:

> 1. I read that squid will normally cache based on the relevant http
> cache headers. Is it possible to force a cgi script to be cached if
> it doesn't have these headers? i.e. if uri matches regex cache it no
> matter what.

You can use the refresh_pattern directive to tweak the level of caching,
and even override certain HTTP rules if you like.

> 2. We are doing basic authentication with the apache module
> mod_auth_pgsql. This authentication against postgresql is resulting
> in a lot of database activity. I read somewhere that squid will cache
> authentication credentials. Does this work in reverse proxy mode?

Yes, if you do the authentication on the reverse proxy.

> 3. In a very old post
> (http://www.squid-cache.org/mail-archive/squid-users/199904/0174.html)
> I read:
>
> "Squid is mainly a HTTP proxy server. The accelerator mode is a bonus,
> but I would not say that Squid is a very good or even fast HTTP server
> accelerator. "

Sounds like me..

> Has this changed since 1999?

Not really no.

> If not what are the other more robust reverse proxy servers out there?

Squid is very robust, and does a good job of it. It is just not lightingly
fast and for plain file delivery most modern webservers can outperform
Squid.

But if your server is not just delivering plain files or slow due to
having heavy database operations or other things using a reverse proxy
such as Squid can improve the situation significantly, and even more so if
the resulting content is cacheable.

Regards
Henrik
Received on Wed Oct 27 2004 - 13:31:35 MDT