Squid is the most popular Web caching software in use today, and it works on a variety of platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows. Squid improves network performance by reducing the amount of bandwidth used when surfing the Web. It makes web pages load faster and can even reduce the load on your web server. By caching and reusing popular web content, Squid allows you to get by with smaller network connections. It also protects the host on your internal network by acting as a firewall and proxying your internal web traffic. You can use Squid to collect statistics about the traffic on your network, prevent users from visiting inappropriate web sites at work or school, ensure that only authorized users can surf the Internet, and enhance your privacy by filtering sensitive information from web requests. Companies, schools, libraries, and organizations that use web-caching proxies can look forward to a multitude of benefits.Written by Duane Wessels, the creator of Squid, Squid: The Definitive Guide will help you configure and tune Squid for your particular situation. Newcomers to Squid will learn how to download, compile, and install code. Seasoned users of Squid will be interested in the later chapters, which tackle advanced topics such as high-performance storage options, rewriting requests, HTTP server acceleration, monitoring, debugging, and troubleshooting Squid.Topics covered include:
Compiling and installing Squid
Using Squid's sophisticated access controls
Tuning disk storage for optimal performance
Configuring your operating system for HTTP interception
Forwarding Requests to other web caches
Using redirectors to rewrite user requests
Monitoring Squid with the cache manager and SNMP
Using Squid to accelerate and protect HTTP servers
Duane Wessels became interested in web caching in 1994 as a topic for his master's thesis in telecommunications at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He worked with members of the Harvest research project to develop web caching software. After the departure of other members to industry jobs, he continued the software development under the name Squid. Another significant part of Duane's research with the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research has been the operation of 6 to 8 large caches throughout the U.S. These caches receive requests from hundreds of other caches, all connected in a "global cache mesh."
Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects. The animal on the cover of Squid: The Definitive Guide is a giant squid (Architeuthis dux). Of the class Cephalopoda, which means "head foot," the giant squid holds much fascination for humans, part of which has to do with the fact that it has never been observed alive in its natural habitat. Scientists have only been able to study specimens that have been caught or found washed up on beaches. This invertebrate can grow to 60 feet in length and weigh as much as a ton. It's a deep-sea dweller (660-2,300 feet) that is found throughout the world's oceans.A giant squid consists of seven parts. Its head houses a complex brain. Its eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom--up to 10 inches in diameter. (Most deep-sea animals have very large eyes so they can gather the small amounts of light available in the depths of the ocean.) Its fins are relatively small and help it to balance and maneuver as it swims. Its main body is called a mantle: it's a muscular sac that contains most of the organ systems. Its eight arms are studded with two rows of suckers; it also has two much longer feeding tentacles, the ends of which also have suckers and are called clubs. Finally, its funnel is a multipurpose tube used to breathe, squirt ink, lay eggs, expel waste, and propel itself.To eat, a giant squid captures its prey with its two long feeding tentacles. Holding the intended dinner with its shorter arms, its sharp horny beak cuts the food up, and a file-like radula sends it down the throat and esophagus; the food then passes directly through the brain to the stomach. Scientists believe giant squid may be solitary hunters because no more than one has ever been caught in the same fishing net. Mary Anne Weeks Mayo was the production editor and copyeditor for Squid: The Definitive Guide. Sada Preisch proofread the book, and Marlowe Shaeffer and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Jamie Peppard and Mary Agner provided production assistance. Johnna Dinse wrote the index.Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.Melanie Wang designed the interior layout, based on a series design by David Futato. This book was converted by Joe Wizda to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was compiled by Mary Anne Weeks Mayo.