[squid-users] Re: Should I see a massive slowdown when chaining squid => privoxy

Amos Jeffries <squid3_at_treenet.co.nz> writes:

[...]

Harry wrote (summarized -ed hp):
Adding squid and privoxy into a proxy setup seems to really really slow
down my browsing as compared to browsing with a direct connection. (no proxy)

And asks if this is normal.

[...]

> Speed gain/loss/other depends on what you are moving from.
>
> MORE IMPORTANTLY: how you define "slow"!
>
> Keep in mind that you also now have around 2x the processing going on
> with 2 proxies. The difference added by Squid can be at least
> 10ms. Some people call that noticeable slowdown. Some dont care about
> anything less than a second.

I'm guessing its more than seconds slower.... but not really sure how
to gage the difference reliably, so as not to be giving flawed
information here or have difference due to caching or something.

Can you suggest a method to arrive at a fairly good comparison?

> * 3.1 is about 10-20% slower than the latest 2.7 on the same
> config. With the older versions of 3.1 being on the slower end of that
> scale as we work to optimize and fix things throughout the series.

Wouldn't 20% be noticeable? So you're saying to back down a few
versions for now?

> * Moving to Squid from a non-proxy setup can be a major drop down
> depending on the browser age. The browsers themselves drop the
> parallel fetch rate from hundreds down to under 10. Browser tweaking
> is the only way to avoid this.

I'm using firefox 4.X on all home lan machines (that have a gui).

Can you recommend some documentation that might help with what you
called `Browser tweaking', I've never done anything special to a
browser other than add or subtract add-on tools.

> * Moving from browser->privoxy to a browser->squid->privoxy setup you
> should have seen only a small drop. Some possibilities are Squid using
> slow disks (maybe RAID), or Squid box is swapping, or the bandwidth is
> being routed down the same physical links to/from Squid.

No raid, and the hardware of the server is P4 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU
3.06GHz and 2GBram running on oldish IDE discs

------- --------- ---=--- --------- --------

Probably should have included some questions about the squid.conf and
privoxy/config in the first post. Maybe there are things in there
that are not good left as default.

I realize that both tools have several config files. I've left all
but the two main ones in default state and have posted my working
/etc/squid/squid.conf and /etc/privoxy/config

There is a lot of debris in the comments but still I thought it might
be useful to leave it all in for jogging memories...But also included
a way to prune the comments by changing the name of the cgi script
at the end of the URL from `disp.cgi' to `strp.cgi'.

Any coaching would be well appreciated.

------- --------- ---=--- --------- --------

squid.conf WITH comments:

   www.jtan.com/~reader/sqcfg/disp.cgi

squid.conf WITH OUT comments

  www.jtan.com/~reader/sqcfg/strp.cgi

  =================================

privoxy's config WITH comments:

  www.jtan.com/~reader/prcfg/disp.cgi

privoxy's config WITH OUT comments:

  www.jtan.com/~reader/prcfg/strp.cgi
Received on Sat Jun 04 2011 - 23:55:23 MDT