Re: What if Squid goes down?

Bill Wichers wrote:

> This doesn't always work in terms of keeping users using the proxy. I have
> found that many of my users call us if nothing happens after 10 seconds or
> so of "connecting to host...". Many other users will just automatically
> de-proxy after any lag problem, even if it isn't a result of the systems
> on our end. It takes about a minute for the proxy.pac script to fall back
> to a secondary cache, and this is longer than the users psycological
> "must not work" timeout interval. Very few users will ever return their
> machines to a proxing config after they disable it, and it usually takes
> a lot of prodding from us to get them to do it.
>

Transparent proxying is then the best solution in all probability, if you can
route all traffic through a mid to high end Cisco, or a linux box (I think BSD
will do it too...Not sure), you can (at the very least) run port 80 traffic
through your proxy server. Alternatively, you could block off port 80, and tell
people to use the automatic proxy config scripts in their browser. ftp will then
go throught your proxy as well, since they're unlikely to sit down and plug
addresses in manually if an automatic option is available.

It's annoying to have to do, but sometimes you have to apply some pressure to
improve performance for everyone.
(The above statement has nothing to do with personal ideologies)

D

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