[squid-users] tweaking squid values

Hi list.

I've recently been given two spare servers that are to be deployed
as squid caches for a network with about 300 workstations, all heavy
internet users and sharing a 10MBit dedicated internet line.
The idea is to have the squids proxy http and MSN messenger
connections, as well as some ftp restricted to certain sites.

The servers in question are one PIII 1.0GHz with 1G of RAM and 72G
of raid-0 diskspace, and one PIII 1.4GHz with 512M RAM and 36G of
raid-0 diskspace. Both run the latest 6.x version of FreeBSD and
Squid 2.5.14_2.

I have tried to configure them according to what I read in
documentation and FAQ's, but I run into heavy swapping, "Unable to
allocate" errors or just bad performance. It seems I'm having
problems finding a good balance between performance and stability.

Could someone give me some rough figures to use for cache_mem,
cache_dir, L1, L2, Q1 and Q2?
Would I benefit from using diskd, or should I run with normal UFS?
Both servers are armed with hardware raid on 15k drives, so the disk
I/O should be pretty decent.

TIA

--
R