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the_bard
n00b
Joined: 03 Dec 2002
Posts: 60
Location: Albany, NY
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 Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:24 am Post subject: Networking Newbie Needs Help W/ Squid Basics |
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I think I need somebody to point me in the right direction  . Here's my situation:
I've got a proxy governing my access to the internet that is out of my control. Connected to that proxy is a wireless router, just a retail Linksys, nothing fancy or hefty. Connected to the router (both wired and wireless) are/will be a constantly changing set of computers. They need a basic 'net connection - enough to "simply" browse the web, and, download drivers,Windows, & various other software updates. I don't need access to webmail or banking services, etc. I don't want to have to configure anything on these systems, due to their high turn around rate.
| Code: | | Internet <---> Proxy <---> Wireless Router <---> Various Systems |
My problem: Intermittently the 'net access dies/slows down to just about nothing. I've been told (by higher-up's, tech-wise) it's due to high traffic, that it's out of my control, and there's nothing I can do about it. That attitude doesn't help me at all. I need that turn around speed, and having my bandwidth fall off to a trickle is not going to help that.
Since I do not have control over neither the connection nor the proxy, I can't solve the problem directly. I do have control over what connects to the proxy, however. Other tech's in this situation have set up a system with running Squid to cache their downloads, so I figured I'd do the same.
| Code: | | Internet <---> Proxy <---> Squid Caching <---> Wireless Router <----> Various Systems |
Hardware-wise, I'm set... got a Gentoo system up and running with two ethernet cards, both of which are working.
Configuration-wise, I'm finding myself clueless. I'd rather keep everything as efficient as possible, but I've got to understand what's going on easily enough to set this up within a reasonable amount of time.
Do I need to pick up the IP address from the proxy server, set up a dhcp server on the system that Squid is running on, and use it to give the wireless router an IP address, then pass all the traffic through Squid?
Or is there a way to simply grab the incoming traffic from one 'net adapter (transparently), let Squid do its caching thing, whether it'll be passing the traffic onto the other 'net adapter or sending the cached data back?
One last requirement  : When I'm done setting this up, I'd like to be able to stick it in a corner and admin it from any one of the systems behind that router... if possible. If not, I'll have to stick it on a KVM switch.
Anybody have any advice for me? |
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adaptr
Watchman
Joined: 06 Oct 2002
Posts: 6730
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
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| Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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If I understand you correctly, the wireless router doesn't, in fact, route anything - it is just used to disseminate the traffic from the web proxy to your users.
If this is the case, setting up Squid is easy - since you don't care about IP addresses.
You could try to configure it with transparent bridging and pick out the http requests, but this is not trivial!
Much, much easier to let the squid box do the routing (NAT by preference, since you can't affect the proxy) and distribute its own IP addresses to the inside.
Then you can set up transparent proxying on Squid, meaning anything coming in for http will be automatically redirected to squid and handled appropriately.
Configuring squid for heavy downloads should be easy too - just crank up the max_object_size to the largest download you think you're going to need, and increase the cache size to as much as you'd like to store.
A neat extra is to tell squid to keep caching downloads that are aborted by users - it will silently continue downloading in the background, and the next time you will have it ready in the cache...
Huge amounts of memory are not really relevant for such a setup, since squid won't be able to keep more than a few large downloads in memory anyway, so doing so would be wildly inefficient.
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the_bard
n00b
Joined: 03 Dec 2002
Posts: 60
Location: Albany, NY
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| Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | If I understand you correctly, the wireless router doesn't, in fact, route anything - it is just used to disseminate the traffic from the web proxy to your users. |
Exactly. All the traffic on the network goes from the proxy to the systems... I don't redirect any of it. I could swap out the router with a switch and still retain my functionality, if I didn't mind loosing my wireless ability.
I'll research the rest of it... it looks like you've got me pointed in the right direction.
Thanks! |
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