[squid-users] cache cluster config management

I'm looking at setting up a fairly large (> 20 machines) cluster of
Squid caches in an http-acceleration type setup. In some cases the
content we're caching will come from third parties (think of an
Akamai-type setup), so the ability to peer caches and avoid hits on
the origin server is key for us.

I'm trying to find a configuration scheme that allows us to add more
machines to the cluster without having to edit 20 different squid.conf
files to list a new cache_peer. Anybody got a solution for this
already?

If not, here are some questions:

1) Will squid be unhappy if the local machine has itself listed as a
peer? In this case I could put the SAME squid.conf on every machine
(via cfengine/rdist/whatever) and just list all 20 caches in it.

2) Is there any way to specify cache_peer siblings via an acl? This
is a private network, so I can predict the ip ranges where peers will
be.

3) Is there any way to adapt the multicast code to be used to locate
other peers without them being listed in the config file? Again, on a
private network I'm not too worried about rogue untrusted caches,
although it would be really cool if there was some MD5sum
authentication or something.

-- 
					thanks,
		
					Will