Re: [squid-users] Trying to combine two 50K GPRS connections with Squid on a Windows LAN for an Internet Cafe in Ghana

DEMETRIO MARTINEZ wrote:
> Hello
> I'm an Italian engineer working in the North of Ghana setting up small internet points.
> I would like to combine two 50Kbps GPRS connections on a Internet point LAN using a Squid hierarchy.
> I have set up the two connections separately on two WinXP SP3 PC (Let's call them PC1 PC2) on my LAN and on each one a Squid server is running. Both PC1 and PC2 now works great as separate forward proxy for itself or for the other machines on the LAN. But I would like to use both internet connections at the same time from any machine.
> I have installed a Squid server also on a third machine (PCkid) on the network, this machine is not connected directly to the internet but uses its Squid as a kid server to his parents in order to forward web pages requests in a round robin fashion.
>
> cache_peer PC1.mshome.net parent 3228 3230 no-query round-robin
> cache_peer PC2.mshome.net parent 3328 3330 no-query round-robin
> ...
> never_direct allow all

You do realize I hope that "mshome.net" is a domain owned by Microsoft.
You should not be using it in your configurations.

>
> The parent have a sibling relationship between them and the their ACLs are set up in order that they accept request from PC3.
> It looks like is working when on any pc on the lan I use PC3 as a forward proxy server, but it is still much slower than if I'd just use directly one of the parents as forward proxy server.
> Is still something I can do it make it work better?

Enable ICP? (ie remove the no-query option)

Not much can be offered without seeing anything you might have tried
optimizing already. On all three Squid.

> Squid have difficulties to recognize DNS names inside the network so most of time I use ip adresses to redefine the parents: may it be part of the problem?

If you need to use DNS and Squid is unable to easily resolves DNS name,
then yes you can expect slowness to happen.

You have two problems then, one is that Squid is depending on DNS. For a
simple child-parent gateway link it should not be needed. As you said
IPs can/should be configured directly into squid.conf and bypass any
issues there.
The other is DNS being flakey. It may be causing issues to other things
than Squid. It should be checked and fixed as well.

> The Lan is just set up as a windows workgroup sharing an landline Internet Connection that is not working.

If your ink to the Internet is not working, that can also lead to
slowness bordering on non-service.

Amos

-- 
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