Squid scalability

[kt]

Has anyone had the experience in deploying a Squid proxy server in a medium to large environment? I just want to know how scalable is the Squid proxy server and what type of hardware is needed to support about 500 concurrent users and a 10Mbps internet connection. User base will grow to about double or triple shortly after.

 

[Crusty]

If performance becomes an issue just throw more hardware at it

Answering this question really depends on knowing what your are going to be using the Proxy for.

 

[kt]

I wish we had the budget to throw additional hardware at something anytime performance becomes an issue.

It will be running as a cache proxy and web content filtering.

 

[Crusty]

Then it's all going to matter on what kind of filters/rules you setup.

Since you mentioned cache, one of the things to NOT skimp on would be RAM.

I would think a decent dual core chip with lots of cache and 8GB of ram would be able to handle the load. Just pick some fast HDD's that have a decent size, depending on how much/how long you are going to want to store your cache.

 

[skyking]

Take your question to the dansguardian mailing list or forum. They have large schools behind a dansguardian proxy, and it uses squid. Somebody will have the specific answer you seek.

 

[sciencewhiz]

My company has squid running with about 10,000 users. However, I have no idea the hardware setup for that.

 

[kt]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
My company has squid running with about 10,000 users. However, I have no idea the hardware setup for that.

How is the web browsing speed? Notice any slow down or does it actually feel faster?

 

[Sunner]

White I'm completely unfamiliar with the details of the setup, Telia here in Sweden had all it's DSL customers sitting behind Squid once upon a time.
Given that they had in excess of one quarter of a million ADSL-customers at the peak, I'd guess it probably scales reasonably well.
Not that I believe they had only one proxy(duh!), but it would be quite silly to pick something that doesn't scale well for a deployment like that.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: kt

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
My company has squid running with about 10,000 users. However, I have no idea the hardware setup for that.

How is the web browsing speed? Notice any slow down or does it actually feel faster?

It's plenty fast, but there's also a really big pipe coming in, so I have no idea how much is due to squid or not. There are times where it's really slow for a minute and then speeds back up.