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

Nathan Hand wrote:

> On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 10:38:27AM +0100, Pat Newby wrote:

>>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.

Actually, NetCache is not better than Squid on price/performance, though
it can do a higher peak throughput, as you point out. See the last
cacheoff results and compare the NetApp, Squid, and Swell numbers:

                      peak
                Price reqs/ hits/ reqs/
                      sec $1k $1k
NetApp-C1105 11,150 375 0.08 1.47 2.87 53.3 47.4 18 34 1.9 5.6 21.9
NetApp-C6100101,700 2100 0.05 1.44 2.88 53.8 48.7 11 21 2.2 6.2 13.9

Squid-2.4.D4 4,108 130 0.50 1.94 3.51 54.8 30.9 18 32 3.7 8.1 24.4

Swell-1450 2,774 120 0.40 1.62 2.97 55.2 42.1 24 43 1.4 1.4 13.6

(This probably will get mangled by many mailers...go check out the site
at:
http://www.measurement-factory.com/results/public/cacheoff/N03/report.by-alph.html
)

  From this it's pretty clear that Squid on FreeBSD is the equal of the
low-end NetCache. I'll leave it to the reader to note how the
Squid-based Swell entry compares (I don't want to try to use the Squid
list for advertising).

NetCache is not a very high performance caching system. In fact, it
shows it's hereditary link to Squid (both originated from Harvest in the
distant past) by performing very similarly on similar hardware. They've
done a few performance enhancements that make it scale better than Squid
to big hardware...but not a whole lot better.

Interestingly, I've found that many of the 'low-end' entries that
provided better price performance than the Squid entries at the cacheoff
don't actually exist for purchase anymore (if they ever did). I did a
little price research a couple of weeks ago to make sure we are still
very competitively priced...I needn't have worried. I couldn't seem to
locate most of the under $5k entries on the vendors websites, or if I
could, they were significantly more expensive than the price reported at
the cacheoff...Seems a bit odd, and misleading.

> 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.

Thanks for the mention. ;-)
                                    --
                       Joe Cooper <joe@swelltech.com>
                   Affordable Web Caching Proxy Appliances
                          http://www.swelltech.com
Received on Fri Jun 01 2001 - 02:29:13 MDT