Re: [squid-users] Replace squid with "A Box" ??

On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 10:38:27AM +0100, Pat Newby wrote:
> We're running squid on a Solaris machine.
>
> Over the past few months, I've been forwarding messages to managers
> and networking people here, from squid-users, about why transparent
> caching will not work. We're an IE5 site, which doesn't help.
>
> Our head of networking says that he can buy a box (for example a
> "NetCache C1100 Web Caching Appliance") which will do transparent
> caching with no problems. The rest of the world is doing this, so it
> must be a problem with squid, in that squid is unable to do the same.

The "will not work" is wrong. It will work. It will work just as
well as any other vendor's transparent caching. You simply don't
want to do it: the Squid FAQ gives some hints as to why.

If you need/want to do transparent caching then Squid won't have
any trouble.

> On a similiar topic, he says that the same box will cache streaming
> media, which squid is unable to do at the moment. (And that it will
> do a lot of other things as well of course).

He's right. There are several limitations in Squid. But NetCache
has its own set of limitations too. The hard bit is figuring out
which limitations are relevant to your site.

NetCache is better than Squid for performance/$. NetCache gets a
higher peak throughput too. NetCache is also proprietary and has
a hefty price-tag. Both are stable and feature-rich.

NetCache has the attraction of "plug-it-in-and-it-works". If you
like this idea then Squid based cache appliances also exist. For
example www.swelltech.com or www.cobalt.com.

-- 
The more I know about the WIN32 API the more I dislike it. It is complex and
for the most part poorly designed, inconsistent, and poorly documented.
                                                                - David Korn