squid : Optimising Web Delivery

Squid: Optimising Web Delivery

Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more.
It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and
reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access
controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available
operating systems, including Windows and is licensed under the GNU GPL.

Making the most of your Internet Connection

Squid is used by hundreds of Internet Providers world-wide to provide their
users with the best possible web access. Squid optimises the data flow
between client and server to improve performance and caches frequently-used
content to save bandwidth. Squid can also route content requests to servers
in a wide variety of ways to build cache server hierarchies which optimise
network throughput.

Website Content Acceleration and Distribution

Thousands of web-sites around the Internet use Squid to drastically increase
their content delivery. Squid can reduce your server load and improve
delivery speeds to clients. Squid can also be used to deliver content from
around the world – copying only the content being used, rather than
inefficiently copying everything. Finally, Squid’s advanced content routing
configuration allows you to build content clusters to route and load balance
requests via a variety of web servers.

[The Squid systems] are currently running at a hit-rate of approximately 75%,
effectively quadrupling the capacity of the Apache servers behind them. This
is particularly noticeable when a large surge of traffic arrives directed to
a particular page via a web link from another site, as the caching efficiency
for that page will be nearly 100%.
– Wikimedia Deployment Information.

Want to learn more?

The Squid project provides a number of resources to assist users design,
implement and support Squid installations. Please browse the Documentation and
Support sections for more information.