[squid-users] Do I need to improve the settings?

I have a Squid box that caches for about 300 users. This is my first
Squid installation. Some sites take longer to fetch in the browser,
but once opened the sites load fairly quickly. For example, if I type
bbc.com it would take about 3-4 seconds of waiting and staring at the
blank browser page and then the page/site loads fairly quickly, almost
instantaneously. It seems like there is a delay somewhere but I can't
quite figure out where/what would cause this.

This is my config file:

acl all src all
acl manager proto cache_object
acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32
acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
acl localnet src static.ip.address.obfuscated/255.255.255.255
acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/255.255.248.0
acl SSL_ports port 443 # https
acl SSL_ports port 563 # snews
acl SSL_ports port 873 # rsync
acl Safe_ports port 80 # http
acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp
acl Safe_ports port 443 # https
acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher
acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais
acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports
acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt
acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http
acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker
acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http
acl Safe_ports port 631 # cups
acl Safe_ports port 873 # rsync
acl Safe_ports port 901 # SWAT
acl purge method PURGE
acl CONNECT method CONNECT
http_access allow manager localhost
http_access deny manager
http_access allow purge localhost
http_access deny purge
http_access deny !Safe_ports
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
http_access allow localhost
acl dsl1 src static.ip.address.obfuscated/255.255.255.255
http_access allow dsl1
http_access deny all
icp_access allow localnet
icp_access deny all
http_port 3128 transparent
hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ?
access_log /var/log/squid/access.log squid
refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080
refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440
refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0
refresh_pattern (Release|Package(.gz)*)$ 0 20% 2880
refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320
acl shoutcast rep_header X-HTTP09-First-Line ^ICY\s[0-9]
upgrade_http0.9 deny shoutcast
acl apache rep_header Server ^Apache
broken_vary_encoding allow apache
extension_methods REPORT MERGE MKACTIVITY CHECKOUT
cache_mgr myname_at_domain.com
httpd_suppress_version_string on
httpd_accel_no_pmtu_disc off
hosts_file /etc/hosts
coredump_dir /var/spool/squid
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 2000 32 512
cache_store_log none
cache_mem 256 MB
maximum_object_size 1024 KB
maximum_object_size_in_memory 64 KB
cache_replacement_policy lru
memory_replacement_policy lru
Received on Mon Aug 30 2010 - 15:51:43 MDT