ISPPlanet Cache Review Series - Wrap-Up

Hardware Platforms for Squid
Squid is an open source solution and can be deployed on virtually any platform running UNIX. For a modest amount of diversity, we evaluated Squid on two Intel platforms—a Pentium 130 and a PIII 500—with different Linux operating systems. Squid has been seen running on hardware of every type, from lowly P133s with several smallish IDE disks to Sun 450s and large Ultra Wide SCSI disk arrays. Metrics have been published for Squid (160 requests per second at the second IRCache Bakeoff), but performance obviously varies by platform.

For example, reader Martin Hamilton reports that, in January, the JANET Web Cache Service shipped over 1.2 billion proxy HTTP requests and 13TB of content. Approximately 133 requests per second are handled by a cache farm composed of PIIs and PIIIs with 512MB RAM and 6-12 Ultra2/LVD disks. JANET runs Squid on a customized version of RedHat Linux, using Linux Virtual Server for load balancing and cache digests for storage distribution. Further Squid platform discussion can be found in the isp-caching list archive.

back