Squid 1.1.11 Performance problems top DU3.2C

I am running Squid v1.1.11 on a system running Digital Unix 3.2C with
74M of real memory, and 128M of swap space.

This morning accessing pages through Squid was running very slowly. To
give you some idea of how slow a particular page retrieved directly
from our web server (which is on a different system) without a proxy
or using our old CERN proxy (which is on the same system as Squid)
takes 1-2 seconds to load. However with the Squid proxy it takes
6-7 seconds. Even after restarting Squid the problem continues.

I know the proxy is being far more heavily used, but it shouldn't
be a slow as it is now.

Most of the suggestions in the Squid FAQ and the Squid User Guide
related to memory issues but the system has plenty of free memory
(both real and virtual).

I know that the problem does not lie with the system itself or
our web server (acceess to other sites through Squid are also very
slow), so therefore it must be a Squid problem.

I've tried increasing the values of cache_mem and dns_children
but this has had no effect.

Does anyone have ideas what the problem could be, or any ideas
how can I improvide the performance of squid on this system (e.g.
parameters in squid.conf to tune)???

        Rgds.,

                Nick.

# Nick O'Brien, Computer Officer "It gives me a headache just to #
# Canterbury Christ Church College think down to your level", Marvin #
# Phone: +44 1227 782468 the Paranoid Android, HHGTTG #
# Email:nick@cant.ac.uk Web:http://www.cant.ac.uk/staff/nick/home.html #
Received on Wed Sep 24 1997 - 03:50:13 MDT