RE: [squid-users] Squid NT vs. Squid Linux

Hmm, 30-50 users really isn't a huge load on a server running Squid! We run
an ISP provided Squid/SquidGuard/firewall/e-mail server in our school. We
have around 100+ simultaneous Internet users on a 2Mbit DSL line. Server
spec is really basic:

P4 16Ghz
512MB RAM
40GB 7200rpm ATA-100 IDE Hard Disk
100Mbit switched LAN connection

As mentioned, your Internet speed will be the real bottleneck here. I'd see
no reason why something lower spec than above would easily provide a benefit
to the 'feel' of Internet speed. It also depends on the style of browsing
done by your LAN users. If they all visit the same websites/pages then
things will definetly feel faster. If users have widely differing browsing
habits then things may not improve too much as the majority of web content
may end up not being served from the cache as no-one has looked at it
before. Our school tends to reach up to 55-60% of hits being served from
the cache but as a school we have fairly common browsing between users as
students often visit pages as suggested by Teachers.

You may also benefit by running a local DNS server, so DNS lookups can be
performed 'on-LAN' as opposed to being performed by an Internet/ISP based
DNS server. Check out BIND on Linux for this. It's not too hard to
configure.

Final comment is that on a 256kbit line, Squid is unlikely to end up being a
bottleneck even on a very low powered server. Many commercial companies
that provide Squid based caches use things as basic as AMD K6-2 450Mhz CPUs!

Hope this is of use,

Regards,

nry

>
>Thanks Serassio and Adam for your feedback. I look briefly at Samba 3.0 and
>it looks like it will do the job for me. I need to read a little more about
>it to be able to configure it.
>
>As Serassio pointed out WAN bandwidth would be my bottleneck. I'm painfully
>aware of this fact: but unfortunately bandwidth isn't readily available and
>the little available is quite expensive in where this LAN is.
>
>Any recommendation on what hardware can comfortably handle 30-50 clients?
>As
>you can see I'm counting on Squid to solve a little of my bandwidth
>problem.
>I wouldn't want Squid to become the bottleneck instead so I don't mind
>investing in a slightly higher performance hardware for Squid if that would
>help.
>
>Thanks again for your response.
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Serassio Guido [mailto:guido.serassio@acmeconsulting.it]
>Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 2:47 AM
>To: Cafe Admin; squid-users@squid-cache.org
>Subject: Re: [squid-users] Squid NT vs. Squid Linux
>
>
>Hi,
>
>At 04.33 15/11/2003, Cafe Admin wrote:
>
> >Hi All,
> >Does any one know if there is any noticeable peformance difference
>between
> >Squid on Windows 2000 Server and on RedHat Linux 9? I'm currently running
> >2.5-Stable3 on a dedicated RH9 box, and I know my hardware is being
> >underutlized (2.0GHz Xeon , 2x10k RPM SCSI, 640MB, 1000Mbps NIC). I'm
> >thinking about converting the machine to Windows File Server/PDC/SquidNT.
> >Serving 30 clients on 100MB network (who are constantly surfing the Net)
> >with 256Kbps connection to the Internet. As always thanks for your
>feedback.
>
>In the Windows port there are still some limitations:
>
>- Max. 2048 File Descriptors, so more than 100 concurrent client cannot be
>safely supported
>- The internal socket loop is select() based vs poll() or better on
>Unix/Linux
>- Transparent proxy is not available
>- Some async FS storage are not available (COSS, diskd)
>
>So currently I expect always better performance from a Linux/Unix based
>Squid.
>
>In Your configuration I think that major bottleneck can be the line speed:
>today an Internet bandwidth of 256 Kbit/s for 30 concurrent web client can
>be very low.
>
>Regards
>
>Guido
>
>
>
>-
>================================================= =======
>Guido Serassio
>Acme Consulting S.r.l.
>Via Gorizia, 69 10136 - Torino - ITALY
>Tel. : +39.011.3249426 Fax. : +39.011.3293665
>Email: guido.serassio@acmeconsulting.it
>WWW: http://www.acmeconsulting.it/
>
>
>

__________________________________________________ _______________
Find a cheaper internet access deal - choose one to suit you.
http://www.msn.co.uk/internetaccess